ndignation against her niece who had so needlessly shocked her. "I do
wish, Cicily," she remonstrated, "that you would endeavor to curb your
impetuosity. It leads you into such absurdities of speech and of action.
Your extravagant way of opening this subject caused me utterly to
mistake your meaning, and set me all a-tremble--for a tempest in a
teapot."

"I think I'll get a divorce," Cicily declared, defiantly. The bride was
not in an apologetic mood, inasmuch, as she regarded herself as the one
undeservedly suffering under great wrongs.

"Perhaps!" Mrs. Delancy retorted, sarcastically. Her usual good humor
was returning, after the first reaction from the stress she had
undergone by reason of the young wife's fantastic mode of speech. "I
suppose you will name Charles's business as the co-respondent."

"It takes more out of him than any woman could," was the spirited
retort. "Of course, I shall. Why not?"

Mrs. Delancy, now thoroughly amused, explained to her niece some details
concerning the grounds required by the statutes in the state of New York
for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully
nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. Cicily was at first
astounded, and then dismayed. But, in the end, she regained her poise,
and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where
such gross injustice could be. She surmised even that in this field she
might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory sort for her wasted
energies.

"Why, I and my club, and other clubs like it," she concluded, "find the
cause of our being in such things as this. We women haven't any
occupation, and we haven't any husbands, essentially speaking--and we're
determined to have both."

The bold declaration was offensive to the old lady's sense of
propriety.

"You can't interfere with your husband's business, Cicily," she said by
way of rebuke, somewhat stiffly.

The young wife, however, was emancipated from such admonitions. She did
not hesitate to express her dissent boldly.

"Yes," she exclaimed indignantly, "that's the idea that you old married
women have been putting up with, without ever whimpering. Why, you've
even been preaching it yourselves--preaching it until you've spoilt the
men utterly. So, now, thanks to your namby-pamby knuckling under always,
it's business first, last, and all the time--and marriage just nowhere.
I tell you, it's all wrong.... I know you're older," she went on