single thread snapped, and from that day
he was mad--mad on but one subject; and so deep and intense was his madness
that it became a part of me as the years passed, and to-day I, too, am
possessed of that madness. And it is the one greatest thing in the world
that I am proud of, John Aldous!"

Not once had her voice betrayed excitement or emotion. Not once had it
risen above its normal tone; and in her eyes, as they turned from the lake
to him, there was the tranquillity of a child.

"And that madness," she resumed, "was the madness of a man whose brain and
soul were overwrought in one colossal hatred--a hatred of divorce and the
laws that made it possible. It was born in him in a day, and it lived until
his death. It turned him from the paths of men, and we became wanderers
upon the face of the earth. Two years after the ruin of our home my mother
and the man she had married died in a ship that was lost at sea. This had
no effect upon my father. Possibly you will not understand what grew up
between us in the years and years that followed. To the end he was a
scientist, a man seeking after the unknown, and my education came to be a
composite of teachings gathered in all parts of the world. We were never
apart. We were more than father and daughter; we were friends,
comrades--he was my world, and I was his.

"I recall, as I became older, how his hatred of that thing that had broken
our home developed more and more strongly in me. His mind was titanic. A
thousand times I pleaded with him to employ it in the great fight I wanted
him to make--a fight against the crime divorce. I know, now, why he did
not. He was thinking of me. Only one thing he asked of me. It was more than
a request. It was a command. And this command, and my promise, was that so
long as I lived--no matter what might happen in my life--I would sacrifice
myself body and soul sooner than allow that black monster of divorce to
fasten its clutches on me. It is futile for me to tell you these things,
John Aldous. It is impossible--you cannot understand!"

"I can," he replied, scarcely above a whisper. "Joanne, I begin--to
understand!"

And still without emotion, her voice as calm as the unruffled lake at their
feet, she continued:

"It grew in me. It is a part of me now. I hate divorce as I hate the worst
sin that bars one from Heaven. It is the one thing I hate. And it is
because of this hatred that I suffered myself to remain the wife of the man
whos