made an impatient gesture. "How should you like to marry that kind
of a girl?"

"Immensely--if she were my kind of girl in other respects."

She took up the argument at another point.

"You are quite mistaken if you think such talk does not affect young
girls. Una was in a state of the most absurd exaltation--" She broke
off, wondering why she had spoken.

Westall reopened a magazine which he had laid aside at the beginning
of their discussion. "What you tell me is immensely flattering to my
oratorical talent--but I fear you overrate its effect. I can assure you
that Miss Van Sideren doesn't have to have her thinking done for her.
She's quite capable of doing it herself."

"You seem very familiar with her mental processes!" flashed unguardedly
from his wife.

He looked up quietly from the pages he was cutting.

"I should like to be," he answered. "She interests me."

II

If there be a distinction in being misunderstood, it was one denied to
Julia Westall when she left her first husband. Every one was ready to
excuse and even to defend her. The world she adorned agreed that John
Arment was "impossible," and hostesses gave a sigh of relief at the
thought that it would no longer be necessary to ask him to dine.

There had been no scandal connected with the divorce: neither side
had accused the other of the offence euphemistically described as
"statutory." The Arments had indeed been obliged to transfer their
allegiance to a State which recognized desertion as a cause for divorce,
and construed the term so liberally that the seeds of desertion were
shown to exist in every union. Even Mrs. Arment's second marriage did
not make traditional morality stir in its sleep. It was known that she
had not met her second husband till after she had parted from the first,
and she had, moreover, replaced a rich man by a poor one. Though Clement
Westall was acknowledged to be a rising lawyer, it was generally felt
that his fortunes would not rise as rapidly as his reputation. The
Westalls would probably always have to live quietly and go out to
dinner in cabs. Could there be better evidence of Mrs. Arment's complete
disinterestedness?

If the reasoning by which her friends justified her course was somewhat
cruder and less complex than her own elucidation of the matter, both
explanations led to the same conclusion: John Arment was impossible. The
only difference was that, to his wife, his impossibility was something
d