ally loved a man do as she did? I tell you, and you know,
that it was the folly of a romantic girl, a folly that does not deserve
the penalty you would inflict. If my daughter did not actually, in so
many words, repudiate her mistake in the beginning, she did so in a
recent interview with you, and she does so finally now by me."

"And she did me a great wrong!" Emmet cried hotly. "If you are a man,
bishop, you must know what it meant to be tricked and disappointed as I
was."

The bishop's face grew livid, and he shrank within himself.

"You offer a pitiful excuse, sir!" he retorted. "It depends upon what
kind of man you mean--the brute man, who regards women merely as the
instruments of his passion, or the chivalrous man, who knows that the
woman is the weaker vessel and bears himself accordingly. I confess to
you that I am not the former kind."

His eyes assumed a keen, inquisitorial look that required all of
Emmet's false fortitude to meet.

"Mr. Emmet, I venture to say that I give you the benefit of a very
considerable doubt in assuming that you have not given my daughter
statutory grounds for divorce by your conduct with some other woman.
It seems passing strange that you should have been so acquiescent under
an arrangement which you describe as such a hardship, if you were not
kept so by a consciousness of duplicity. But I have no desire to
pursue that line of inquiry. This so-called marriage must be
dissolved. Let us admit that you have not given statutory grounds;
there are other grounds concerning which there exists no manner of
doubt whatever. I do not speak now of the eternal fitness of things,
of those humane and ethical considerations to which I find you
impervious, but of legal grounds. My daughter cannot bring an action
for non-support against you, because she left you voluntarily. It
remains for you to institute proceedings of divorce against her on the
ground of desertion. We will not defend the suit."

There was something almost clairvoyant in the bishop's guess of the
mayor's infidelity, for pride had caused Felicity to keep Lena out of
her confession. She had told only as much as she chose to tell,
leaving her father to imagine himself in possession of all the facts.
Had she told all, she would have strengthened her case at the expense
of her pride; but this was a sacrifice she could not bring herself to
make.

Before the bishop finished speaking, his listener had discerned that