hanically and
took the doll, smiling her thanks, and stroking the child's fair curls
tenderly. Then she recommenced her walk up and down the room, carrying
the doll carefully on her arm.

"Take care of dolly," Martha recommended, and went back to her other
toys.

"Yes, Henriette, you and Hubert have made your calculations cleverly.
You have advocates only too eloquent in my woman's temperament. You have
succeeded only too well by your fraud, through which I now stand here,
with a life in fragments, bound, chafe as I may, to choose between
alternative disasters for myself and for all of us. Had you two only
acted straightly with me, and kindly allowed me to judge for myself,
instead of treacherously insisting on judging for me, this knot of your
tying which you naively bring me to unravel, would never have wrung the
life out of me as it is doing now--nor would it have caused you and
Hubert so much virtuous distress."

Hadria recommenced her restless pacing to and fro.

"But, Hadria, _do_ be calm, _do_ look at the matter from our point of
view. I have owned my indiscretion." (Hadria gave a little scornful
cry.) "Surely you are not going to throw over all allegiance to your
husband on _that_ account, even granting he was to blame." Hadria
stopped abruptly.

"I deny that I owe allegiance to a man who so treated me. I don't deny
that he had excuses. The common standards exonerate him; but, good
heavens, a sense of humour, if nothing else, ought to save him from
making this grotesque claim on his victim! To preach the duties of wife
and mother to _me!_" Hadria broke into a laugh. "It is inconceivably
comic."

Henriette shrugged her shoulders. "I fear my sense of humour is
defective. I can't see the justice of repudiating the duty of one's
position, since there the position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be
denied. Why not make the best of it?"

"Henriette, you are amazing! Supposing a wicked bigamist had persuaded a
woman to go through a false marriage ceremony, and when she became aware
of her real position, imagine him saying to her, with grave and virtuous
mien, 'My dear, why repudiate the duties of your position, since there
your position _is_, an accomplished fact not to be denied?'"

"Oh, that's preposterous," cried Henriette.

"It's preposterous and it's parallel."

"Hubert did not try to entrap you into doing what was wrong."

"We need not discuss that, for it is not the point. The point is that
the