that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every
marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.
"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a
question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a
question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's
what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless
attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and
it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole
business."

She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back
to the personal.

"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the
window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!"
she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.

Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so
piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might
hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen
to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.

She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I
respect, and you despise me."

"No, I don't; I pity you."

"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if
I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of
her desire.

His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He
knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of
a woman.

"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear the monotony of our
simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and
unmistakable in its sincerity.

She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her
head, and they rode in silence.

After they left the car Allen sat, with savage eyes and grimly set
mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and
helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful,
remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.

It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be
helpless--that they should need some man to protect them against some
other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women
subordinate and trivial and deceptiv