not, you are still my wife. It is something to own the
shell that once contained the pearl."

Another time he goes hurrying through the house, prayer-book in hand, a
thumb marking the marriage ceremony. He has been brooding and brooding
and snatching at straws.

"Read this, Lucy. Just look it over. It's what you and I stood up and
promised before a lot of people. I'm glad I looked it up. You'll see
right away that it's a contract which nobody could have the face to
break. I want you to read it over to yourself."

[Illustration: "'It's what you and I stood up and promised before a lot
of people.'"]

Finally she does, just to please him, in the sad knowledge that no good
will come of it.

"You'd forgotten, hadn't you? But just see what you promised. Didn't
you mean to keep these promises when you made them?"

"Oh, of course I did. Why ask that?"

"But now you want to back out."

Then the old argument that a promise which one is powerless to keep
isn't a bona fide promise and cannot be so regarded. Fulton sees that
for himself presently.

"No, of course," he says. "If you don't love me, you can't make
yourself by an effort of will. And if you don't honor me . . ."

"You _know_ I do."

"How about the other thing, the promise to obey? That is surely in
your power to keep."

She admits that she can keep that promise; but she leaves herself a
loophole. She does not say that she _will_ keep it.

And so the words of the prayer book shed no light on the situation, and
I shouldn't wonder if Fulton raged against the book, and flung it into
a far corner, and was immediately sorry.

For a man situated as Fulton was, some definite plan of action is
necessary; and to my mind the one that would be best would be one in
which the least possible consideration for the woman should be shown.
When Lucy began to play clench-dummy with her own life, with her
husband's love, and with the institution of marriage, Fulton, I think,
would have made no mistake if he had stripped her to the skin and taken
a great whip to her.

Her whole life had been one of self-indulgence. She had indulged
herself with Fulton's love till she was glutted with it; that she was
the mother of two children may, perhaps, be traced to self-indulgence,
and surely it must be laid down to self-indulgence that she was not the
mother of more than two. Her self-indulgence kept Fulton poor and in
debt, and it had come to this: that her impulse