had full right to her resentment. As his partner in the chancy
enterprise of marriage were not her feelings and desires entitled to
equal consideration? He had assumed the role of dictator. And she had
revolted. That was all. She was justified.

Eventually she slept. At ten o'clock, heavy-eyed, suffering an
intolerable headache, she rose and dressed.

Beside her plate lay a thick letter addressed in Bill's handwriting.
She drank her coffee and went back to the bedroom before she opened the
envelope. By the postmark she saw that it had been mailed on a train.

DEAR GIRL: I have caught my breath, so to speak, but I doubt if ever a
more forlorn cuss listened to the interminable clicking of car wheels.
I am tempted at each station to turn back and try again. It seems so
unreal, this parting in hot anger, so miserably unnecessary. But when
I stop to sum it up again, I see no use in another appeal. I could
come back--yes. Only the certain knowledge that giving in like that
would send us spinning once more in a vicious circle prevents me. I
didn't believe it possible that we could get so far apart. Nor that a
succession of little things could cut so weighty a figure in our lives.
And perhaps you are very sore and resentful at me this morning for
being so precipitate.

I couldn't help it, Hazel. It seemed the only way. It seems so yet to
me. There was nothing more to keep me in Granville--everything to make
me hurry away. If I had weakened and temporized with you it would only
mean the deferring of just what has happened. When you declared
yourself flatly and repeatedly it seemed hopeless to argue further. I
am a poor pleader, perhaps; and I do not believe in compulsion between
us. Whatever you do you must do of your own volition, without pressure
from me. We couldn't be happy otherwise. If I compelled you to follow
me against your desire we should only drag misery in our train.

I couldn't even say good-by. I didn't want it to be good-by. I didn't
know if I could stick to my determination to go unless I went as I did.
And my reason told me that if there must be a break it would better
come now than after long-drawn-out bickerings and bitterness. If we
are so diametrically opposed where we thought we stood together we have
made a mistake that no amount of adjusting, nothing but separate roads,
will rectify. Myself I refuse to believe that we have made such a
mistake. I don't think that honestl