h a woman who is desperately in love, to prevent her marrying the man
of her choice, than to try to dissuade a woman from marrying a man she has
set her head upon. You feel sympathy with the former, and you have human
nature and the whole glorious love-making Past at your back, to give you
confidence and eloquence. But with the latter you are cowed and beaten
beforehand, and tongue-tied during the contest.

So she became Alice Asbury, and these two blighted beings took a flat.
Before they had been at home from their honeymoon a week she came down to
see me, and told me that she hated Asbury.

Imagine a bride whose bouquet, only a month before, you had held at the
altar, and heard her promise to love, honor, and obey a man until death
did them part, coming to you with a confession like that. Still, if but
one half she tells me of him is true, I do not wonder that she hates him.

With her revolutionary, anarchistic completeness, she has renounced the
idea of compromise or adaptability as finally as if she had seen and
passed the end of the world. There is no more pliability in her with
regard to Asbury than there is in a steel rod. How different she used to
be with Brandt! How she consulted his wishes and accommodated herself to
him!

When a woman born to be ruled by love only passes by her master spirit,
she becomes an anomaly in woman--she makes complications over which the
psychologist wastes midnight oil, and if he never discovers the solution,
it is because of its very simplicity.

All the sweetness seems to have left Alice's nature. She keeps somebody
with her every moment. That one guest chamber in her flat has been
occupied by all the girls that she can persuade to visit her. Asbury
dislikes company, but she says she does not care. She cannot keep
visitors long, because as soon as they discover that they are unwelcome
to Asbury, naturally they go home.

Fortunately, Asbury does not care for Sallie Cox any more. When his vanity
was wounded, his love died instantly. I think he is more in love with
himself than he ever was with any woman. There are men, you know, whose
one grand passion in life is for themselves. But Alice knows that Brandt
still cares for her, and she feeds her romantic fancy on this fact, and
has her introspective miseries to her heart's content. She is far too
cool-headed a woman to do anything rash. Sometimes I think her morbid
nature obtains more real satisfaction out of her joyless situati