nst the
other you're helpless?"

Mrs. Strickland gave me a look in which I read no great
friendliness, but did not answer. Perhaps I had struck home.
She went on in a low and trembling voice:

"I never knew it was possible to hate anyone as much as I hate him.
Do you know, I've been comforting myself by thinking
that however long it lasted he'd want me at the end? I knew
when he was dying he'd send for me, and I was ready to go;
I'd have nursed him like a mother, and at the last I'd have told
him that it didn't matter, I'd loved him always, and I forgave
him everything."

I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women
have for behaving beautifully at the death-bed of those they love.
Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which
postpones their chance of an effective scene.

"But now -- now it's finished. I'm as indifferent to him as
if he were a stranger. I should like him to die miserable,
poor, and starving, without a friend. I hope he'll rot with
some loathsome disease. I've done with him."

I thought it as well then to say what Strickland had suggested.

"If you want to divorce him, he's quite willing to do whatever
is necessary to make it possible."

"Why should I give him his freedom?"

"I don't think he wants it. He merely thought it might be
more convenient to you."

Mrs. Strickland shrugged her shoulders impatiently. I think
I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to
be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find
so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not
realise how motley are the qualities that go to make up a
human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur,
malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by
side in the same human heart.

I wondered if there was anything I could say that would ease
the sense of bitter humiliation which at present tormented
Mrs. Strickland. I thought I would try.

"You know, I'm not sure that your husband is quite responsible
for his actions. I do not think he is himself. He seems to
me to be possessed by some power which is using him for its
own ends, and in whose hold he is as helpless as a fly in a
spider's web. It's as though someone had cast a spell over him.
I'm reminded of those strange stories one sometimes
hears of another personality entering into a man and driving
out the old one. The soul lives unstably in the body, and is
capable