pudent cynicism of all this, for she was too
happy to be vexed with any one just then. "I'm glad you've come to think
so well of husbands' rights at last, Louise," she said.

Mrs. Maynard took the little puncture in good part. "Oh, yes, George
and I have had a good deal of light let in on us. I don't suppose my
character was much changed outwardly in my sickness," she suggested.

"It was not," answered Grace warmly. "It was intensified, that was all."

Mrs. Maynard laughed in her turn, with real enjoyment of the conception.
"Well, I wasn't going to let on, unless it came to the worst; I did
n't say much, but I kept up an awful thinking. It would have been easy
enough to get a divorce, and George would n't have opposed it; but I
looked at it in this way: that the divorce wouldn't have put us back
where we were, anyway, as I had supposed it would. We had broken into
each other's lives, and we couldn't get out again, with all the divorces
under the sun. That's the worst of getting married: you break into each
other's lives. You said something like it to me, that day when you came
back from your sail with Walter Libby. And I just concluded that there
could n't be any trial that would n't be a great deal easier to bear
than getting rid of all your trials; and I just made up my mind that
if any divorce was to be got, George Maynard might get it himself; a
temporary separation was bad enough for me, and I told him so, about the
first words I could speak. And we're going to try the new departure
on that platform. We don't either of us suspect we can have things
perfectly smooth, but we've agreed to rough it together when we can't.
We've found out that we can't marry and then become single, any more
than we could die and come to life again. And don't you forget it,
Grace! You don't half know yourself, now. You know what you have been;
but getting married lets loose all your possibilities. You don't know
what a temper you've got, nor how badly you can behave--how much like a
naughty, good-for-nothing little girl; for a husband and wife are just
two children together: that's what makes the sweetness of it, and that's
what makes the dreadfulness. Oh, you'll have need of all your good
principles, I can tell you, and if you've a mind to do anything
practical in the way of high purposes, I reckon there'll be use for them
all."

Another lady who was astonished at Grace's choice was more incurably
disappointed and more grieved for th