ave that for the rest of us.
It quite spoils you."

"I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past
her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an
ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the
modern divorce, is there?"

The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands
together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near
him.

"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let
me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked
piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and
yours is such an understanding atmosphere."

Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped
himself now to sugar.

"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you
know. And I have been of the most colorless kind."

"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.

"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's
after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part
of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you
off your little foothold."

"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion.

The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his
material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked
at the lady.

"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man
who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. A
duchess isn't far enough up. An American empress is higher."

The lady listening to him, shuddered a little.

"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop,
whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther
on, to become more delightful. Here you are progressed and civilized,
after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child,
here you are all alone."

She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp.

"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! You're terribly
wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed."

But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. She shook
the arm a little.

"Don't go on," she said deeply. "I tell you not to go on." After a
few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the
gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the
eave