r:

"Don't cry, dear, everything will be all right."

[Illustration: "I'M SO UNHAPPY, DEAR," CRIED VIRGINIA. PAGE 241]

In broken sentences, interrupted every now and then by renewed
weeping, Virginia cried:

"I'm so unhappy--dear--so unhappy--you will never know. This thing is
not of yesterday--I've endured it so long--until I could stand it no
longer. He despises me--he said he did. He bought me--and paid for me.
How can he have anything but contempt for me?"

"What did he do or say?" demanded Fanny, at a loss what to advise.
"What does he say this morning? Have you spoken to him?"

Virginia, more calm, shook her head.

"No--I've scarcely exchanged a word with him. He can't definitely
recall what he said or did, but he is thoroughly repentant and
ashamed."

"That's something anyway," said Fanny encouragingly.

Virginia shook her head. Doubtfully she asked:

"Is it--when it gives no guarantee for the future?"

Fanny was silent. There are some crises in a woman's life when even a
sister cannot advise, when a woman must decide for herself. Slowly she
said: "But after all's said and done, dear--he is your husband and
that makes everything right, doesn't it?"

"No," retorted Virginia bitterly, "it merely makes it legal."

"Legal?"

"Yes, lecherous old men of eighty marry girls in their teens--but does
that make their relations right? Avaricious young men in their
twenties marry women in their fifties. Does marriage make their
relations right? In some States white women can marry black men--marry
them just as properly as you and I are married--but does marriage make
their relations right? No, marriage merely makes them legal."

"Do you mean to tell me that if a woman has a marriage certificate--"

"Precisely. She has documentary evidence that she is lawfully entitled
to live with a man--that's all. A marriage certificate has nothing to
do with the morality of marriage! Nothing!"

"Then what has?"

"Love--and self-respect," said Virginia. "The legal thing isn't always
the right thing, and if I am ever forced to choose between what is
legal and what is right I shall choose what is right."

"Are you going to do--anything?"

"What can I do?"

"I don't know," stammered Fanny. She was rather afraid of her
impulsive little sister. She might do something rash--something that
would hurt them all. Anxiously she said:

"And yet I feel that you are going to do something. Aren't you?"

Virginia made no repl