old me,
and am anxious to hear more about it, if to speak of it would not wound
you. Divorced! How you must have suffered! And I did not have the chance
to offer you my help--my sympathy."

"Yes, I have suffered. But that is all over now. I am a free woman. I am
beginning my life over again."

It was a beautiful afternoon, and by mutual consent, which neither put
into words, they diverged from the exact route to Selma's lodging house
and turned their steps to the open country beyond the city limits--the
picturesque dell which has since become the site of Benham's public
park. There they seated themselves where they would not be interrupted.
Selma told him on the way the few vital facts in her painful story, to
which he listened in a tense silence, broken chiefly by an occasional
ejaculation expressive of his contempt for the man who had brought such
unhappiness upon her. She let him understand, too, that her married
life, from the first, had been far less happy than he had
imagined--wretched makeshift for the true relation of husband and wife.
She spoke of her future buoyantly, yet with a touch of sadness, as
though to indicate that she was aware that the triumphs of intelligence
and individuality could not entirely be a substitute for a happy home.

"And what do you expect to do?" he inquired in a bewildered fashion, as
though her delineation of her hopes had been lost on him.

"Do? Support myself by my own exertions, as I have told you. By writing
I expect. I am doing very well already. Do you question my ability to
continue?"

"Oh, no; not that. Only--"

"Only what? Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the
chance to prove what is in them--who would treat us like china dolls and
circumscribe us by conventions? I know you are not, because I have heard
you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness. Only what?"

"I can't make up my mind to it. And I suppose the reason is that it
means so much to me--that you mean so much to me. What is the use of my
dodging the truth, Selma--seeking to conceal it because such a short
time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife? Forgive me if I hurt
you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you
are happy in your liberty. I can't help it; it's my nature to speak
openly. And there's no bar now. The fact that you are free makes clear
to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one
woman in the world for me--