elf-respect. The day
she ceased to love her husband she would leave him forever. To her way
of thinking, it was shocking to go on living with a man merely because
it suited one's convenience and comfort. She knew married women who
did not care for their husbands, some actually detested the men they
had married, and had always held in horror the intimate relation which
marriage sanctioned. She felt sorry for such women, but secretly she
despised them. They alone were to blame. Had they not married knowing
well that there was no real affection in their hearts for the men to
whom they gave themselves? The cynicism and effrontery of young girls
regarding marriage particularly revolted her. Eager for wealth and
social position, they offered themselves with brazen effrontery in the
matrimonial market, immodestly displaying their charms to the
lecherous, covetous eyes of blase, degenerate men. Any question of
attachment, love, affection was never for a moment considered. The
idea that a man could be even considered unless he were able to provide
a fine establishment was laughed to scorn. The girls were all men
hunters but they hunted only rich men. They called the feeling they
experienced for the man they caught in their toils "love." They meant
something quite different. To a girl of Helen's ideas, such manoeuvers
were shocking. To her the marriage tie was something sacred, a
relation not to be entered into lightly. Kenneth was rich, it was
true, but she would have loved him none the less had he been one of his
own fifteen dollar a week clerks. When they were married and the
romance was over, he stopped playing the lover to devote himself to the
more serious business of making money, but with her, time, instead of
dimming the flame, only caused it to burn the brighter. This man whom
she had married was her only thought. In him centered every interest
of her life.

A muffled outburst of profanity from Kenneth aroused her from her
reveries.

"That's always the way when one's in a hurry," he exclaimed petulantly.
"Ring for Francois. Why the devil isn't he here?"

Quickly, Helen sprang up from the trunk and touched an electric button.

"What's the matter, dear?" she asked.

She approached her husband who, at the far end of the room, was red in
the face from the unusual exertion of trying to coax the buckle of a
strap into a hole obviously out of reach. He pulled and strained till
the muscles stood out o