or richer,
for poorer" were not merely literature to them.

'Nous avons change tout cela', although there are yet certain crudities
to be eliminated. In these enlightened times, if in one week a lady is
not entirely at home with husband number one, in the next week she may
have travelled in comparative comfort some two-thirds across a continent,
and be on the highroad to husband number two. Why travel? Why have to put
up with all this useless expense and worry and waste of time? Why not
have one's divorce sent, C.O.D., to one's door, or establish a new branch
of the Post-office Department? American enterprise has surely lagged in
this.

Seated in a plush-covered rocking-chair that rocked on a track of its
own, and thus saved the yellow-and-red hotel carpet, the Honourable Dave
Beckwith patiently explained the vexatious process demanded by his
particular sovereign state before she should consent to cut the Gordian
knot of marriage. And his state--the Honourable Dave remarked--was in the
very forefront of enlightenment in this respect: practically all that she
demanded was that ladies in Mrs. Spence's predicament should become, pro
tempore, her citizens. Married misery did not exist in the Honourable
Dave's state, amongst her own bona fide citizens. And, by a wise
provision in the Constitution of our glorious American Union, no one
state could tie the nuptial knot so tight that another state could not
cut it at a blow.

Six months' residence, and a whole year before the divorce could be
granted! Honora looked at the plush rocking-chair, the yellow-and-red
carpet, the inevitable ice-water on the marble-topped table, and the
picture of a lady the shape of a liqueur bottle playing tennis in the
late eighties, and sighed. For one who is sensitive to surroundings, that
room was a torture chamber.

"But Mr. Beckwith," she exclaimed, "I never could spend a year here!
Isn't there a--house I could get that is a--a little--a little better
furnished? And then there is a certain publicity about staying at a
hotel."

The Honourable Dave might have been justly called the friend of ladies in
a temporary condition of loneliness. His mission in life was not merely
that of a liberator, but his natural goodness led him to perform a
hundred acts of kindness to make as comfortable as possible the purgatory
of the unfortunates under his charge. He was a man of a remarkable
appearance, and not to be lightly forgotten. His hair, above all,