of defiance, of daring. She was, as she sat there, a
living challenge to Fate.

"Is he happy?" queried Madame.

"I suppose so. His ideal of a wife seems to be one who shall arrange and
order his house, look after his clothing, provide for his material
comfort, be there when he comes, sit at the head of his table, dressed
in her best, when he deigns to honour dinner with his presence, ask no
questions as to his comings or goings, keep still if he prefers to read
either the morning or evening paper while he eats, and to refrain from
annoying him by being ill, or, at least, by speaking of illness.

[Sidenote: Quiet Rebuke]

"I saw, once, a huge cocoa-husk door-mat, with the word 'Welcome' on it
in big red letters. I've been sorry ever since that I didn't buy it, for
it typified me so precisely. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to have at
your front door something that exactly indicated the person inside, like
the overture to a Wagner opera, using all the themes and _motifs_ that
were coming? That's what I've been for six years, but, if a worm will
turn, why not a wife?"

"If you'll excuse me for saying so," Madame answered, in a tone of quiet
rebuke, "I don't think it was quite right to come away without letting
him know you were coming."

"Why not?"

"He'll wonder where you are."

"I've had plenty of opportunity to wonder where he was."

"But what will he think, when he finds out you have gone?"

"He may not have noticed it. I have competent servants and they'll look
after him as well or better than I do. If I had left a wax figure in the
library, in one of my gowns, with its back to the door and its head bent
over a book, I could have been well on my way to China before I was
missed, or, rather, that I was among those not present. If he has found
it out, it has been by the application of the same inductive methods by
which I discover that he's not coming home to dinner."

[Sidenote: Do You Love Him?]

"Do you love him?" In the answer to that question lay Madame's solution
of all difficulties, past and to come. To her, it was the divine reagent
of all Life's complicated chemistry; the swift turning of the prism,
with ragged edges breaking the light into the colours of the spectrum,
to a point where refraction was impossible.

"I did," Edith sighed, "but marriage is a great strain upon love."

The silvery cadence of Madame's laughter rang through the house and
echoed along the corridor. As though in answer,