"

"We quarrelled last night--about you!" he said, desperately.

"Really?"

"Gossip has linked us together. My wife has heard and put the worst
construction on it."

"Well?"

"We said things to each other last night that can never be forgiven or
forgotten. I left the house and walked the streets--hours! I looked my
whole life back and through as though it were some stranger's" He
turned abruptly away to the windows and stayed a moment, looking down
the drive.

Ethel said nothing.

He came back to her in a few moments. "I tell you we ought to be
taught--we ought to be taught, when we are young, what marriage really
means, just as we are taught not to steal, nor lie, nor sin. In,
marriage we do all three--when we're ill-mated. We steal affection from
some one else, we lie in our lives and we sin in our relationship."

Ethel asked him very quietly:

"Do you mean that you are a sinner, a thief, and a liar?"

Brent looked at her in horror.

"Oh, take some of the blame," said Ethel; "don't put it all on the
woman."

"You've never spoken to me like this before."

"I've often wanted to," replied Ethel. Then she asked him: "What do you
intend doing?"

"Separate," he answered, eagerly. "You don't doctor a poisoned limb
when your life depends on it; you cut it off. When two lives generate a
deadly poison, face the problem as a surgeon would. Amputate."

"And after the operation? What then?" asked Ethel.

"That is why I am here facing you. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Oh, dear, yes. Perfectly. I have been waiting for you to get to the
point."

"Ethel!" and he impulsively stretched out his arms as though to embrace
her.

She drew back slightly, just out of his reach.

"Wait." She looked up at him, quizzically: "Suppose we generate poison?
What would you do? Amputate me?"

"You are different from all other women."

"Didn't you tell your wife that when you asked her to marry you?"

He turned away impatiently: "Don't say those things, Ethel, they hurt."

"I'm afraid, Christian, I'm too frank, aren't I?"

"You stand alone, Ethel. You seem to look into the hearts of people and
know why and how they beat."

"I do--sometimes. It's an awkward faculty."

He looked at her glowingly: "How marvellously different two women can
be! You--my wife."

Ethel shook her head and smiled her calm, dead smile "We're not really
very different, Christian. Only some natures like change. Yours does.
And the new have