melodramatic;
but truth is more drama than comedy, I fancy. Now, what do you think of
it all, Mrs. Falchion?"

I had felt her shrink a little at the earlier part of my story, as if
she feared that her own tale was to be brutally bared before her;
but that soon passed, and she languidly tapped the chair-arm as the
narrative continued. When it was finished, she leaned over slightly, and
with these same fingers tapped my arm. I thrilled involuntarily.

"He died, did he?" she said. "That was the most graceful thing he could
do. So far as my knowledge of the world is concerned, men of his class
do NOT die. They live, and they never rise above their degradation. They
had not brains or courage enough to keep them out of gaol, and they have
not pluck or brains enough to succeed--afterwards. Your friend Anson was
quite gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the
fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making
other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he
would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have
been an arrow--not a thorn--in her side. Very likely he would have
created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the
false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want to
do so; it never does. It is long-suffering; it tries not to see and
acknowledge things until the culprit himself forces it to take action.
Then it says: 'Now you have openly and inconsiderately broken our bond
of mutual forbearance. You make me send you away. Go, then, behind stone
walls, and please do not come to me again. If you do, you will only be
a troublesome ghost. You will cause awkwardness and distress.' So,
Mr. Anson--I must be polite to him--did the most reasonable and proper
thing. He disappeared from the play before it actually became tragedy.
There was no tragedy in his death--death is a magnificent ally; it
untangles knots. The tragedy was in his living--in the perpetual ruin
of his wife's life, renewed every morning. He disappeared. Then the
play became drama, with only a little shadow of tragedy behind it. Now,
frankly, am I not right?"

"Mrs. Falchion," I said, "your argument is clever, but it is only
incidentally true. You draw life, society and men no more correctly than
the author of 'A Sweet Apocalypse' would draw you. The social law you
sketch when reduced to its bare elements, is remorseless. It does not
provide for