ast convulsion of regions beneath the lowest seas, will
sometimes force up to light of day strange flotsam from the ocean-bed.
Things that the eyes of men have never seen, nor their busy minds
conceived, float up to face the sun. From Lucretia's shaken soul arose
such un-imagined things.

Her words came forth swiftly, almost with violence.

"Benjamin, my daughter proposes leaving for Reno, Nevada, next week to
procure a divorce.--I'm not saying that plenty of divorces are n't
justified. I know they are. Plenty of remarriages too, I make no
doubt. I've lived long enough to know that extremes are always wrong,
and the middle course {72} is almost always right. I will admit, if
you like, that every case is a thing apart, and stands on its own
merits, and that only God and a woman's conscience are the judges of
what she should do. But Desire's case has no merits!

"I know Arnold, and I know Desire; he is a busy man and she is an
indulged woman. She might have entered into his life and interests if
she had chosen; the door was as much open as it can be between a man
and a woman. I don't claim it is ever easy for them to see clearly
into each other's worlds. But they do it, every day. Here is Arnold
working himself to death, reducing fractures and removing appendixes,
and trying to make the people who swarm to him into whole and healthy
men and women. That's a good way to help the world if you do it with
every ounce of {73} conscience there is in you. Here is Desire,
fiddling with art and literature and civics and economics, and wanting
to uplift the masses with Scandinavian dramas and mediaeval art and
woman suffrage. If she really wants to enrich life for others, and she
says she does, why, in Heaven's name, does n't she hold up Arnold
Ackroyd's hands? There is work that is worth while, and it would take
more brains and ability than she owns to do it well! It is _her_ work;
she chose it; she dedicated herself to it. Now she repudiates it for a
whim."

"How do you know it is just a whim, Lucretia?" I interrupted rather
shame-facedly. "Mightn't it be--er--a very violent attachment?"

Lucretia shook her head.

"These women nowadays are simply crazy about themselves. Are {74}
self-centred people ever capable of great passions?"

I made no protest, for I had thought the same thing myself.

"When they have dethroned their God and repudiated their families,
what is there left to worship and work for but themselves?" she