es to put an end to the relation. I judge
she intends, later, to contract another marriage, though she is n't
disposed to lay stress on that point."

{68}

I continued to look at Lucretia wide-eyed, and possibly wide-mouthed.
The things she was saying were so preposterous, so incredible, that I
could not accept them. It was as if I had received a message that the
full moon was not "satisfied" to climb the evening sky.

"Lord! Lord! Little Desire!" I muttered.

"She is a woman of thirty, Benjamin."

"What does she say?" I exploded. "What is wrong in her married life?
People don't do these things causelessly--not the people we are or
know."

"She says a great deal," returned her mother dryly. "Did you ever know
a Withacre to be lacking in words, Benjamin? Desire is very fluent. I
might say she is eloquent."

{69}

"But what does it all amount to, anyhow?" I demanded impatiently.
Dazed though I was, my consciousness of being the head of the family
was returning.

Lucretia lifted her left hand, which was trembling, and checked off
the items on her fingers. Her hands were shapely, though dark and
shrunken, with swollen veins across the back. The firelight struck the
worn gold of her wedding ring.

"She demands a less hampered life; a more variegated self-expression;
a chance to help the world in her own way; an existence that shall be
a daily development; the opportunity to give perpetual stimulus and
refreshment to an utterly congenial mate. Oh! I know her reasons by
heart," said Lucretia. "They sound like fine things, don't they,
Benjamin?"

{70}

"Who is the other man?"

"Fortunately, none of us know him. He is a Westerner with one of those
absurdly swollen fortunes. Desire would n't have thought it a wider
life to marry a poorer man. Such women don't."

"I wish you would n't put Desire in a class and call her such women,
Lucretia," I protested irritably.

My sister looked at me strangely.

"You, too? Can money buy you too?" she said.

She rose and steadied her trembling arms upon the low mantle. She
stood, a black-clad figure, between me and the glowing hearth, looking
down into the heart of the fire as she spoke. I had begun to perceive,
vaguely, that here was no sister I had ever known before. In a way she
was beside, or rather beyond, herself.

{71}

We Raynies are self-controlled people. Lucretia had always been a
silent woman, keeping her emotions to her self. But they say
earthquakes, v