or they would
expect her in St. Louis, and she could not go there. And if she wrote
them, they might try to stop the marriage, or at least to delay it for
some years.

Was it possible that a lingering doubt remained in her mind that to
postpone her happiness would perhaps be to lose it? In her exile she had
learned enough to know that a divorced woman is like a rudderless ship at
sea, at the mercy of wind and wave and current. She could not go back to
her life in St. Louis: her situation there would be unbearable: her
friends would not be the same friends. No, she had crossed her Rubicon
and destroyed the bridge deep within her she felt that delay would be
fatal, both to her and Chiltern. Long enough had the banner of their love
been trailed in the dust.

Summer came again, with its anniversaries and its dragging, interminable
weeks: demoralizing summer, when Mrs. Mayo quite frankly appeared at her
side window in a dressing sacque, and Honora longed to do the same. But
time never stands absolutely still, and the day arrived when Mr. Beckwith
called in a carriage. Honora, with an audibly beating heart, got into it,
and they drove down town, past the department store where Mr. Mayo spent
his days, and new blocks of banks and business houses that flanked the
wide street, where the roaring and clanging of the ubiquitous trolley
cars resounded.

Honora could not define her sensations--excitement and shame and fear and
hope and joy were so commingled. The colours of the red and yellow brick
had never been so brilliant in the sunshine. They stopped before the new
court-house and climbed the granite steps. In her sensitive state, Honora
thought that some of the people paused to look after them, and that some
were smiling. One woman, she thought, looked compassionate. Within, they
crossed the marble pavement, the Honourable Dave handed her into an
elevator, and when it stopped she followed him as in a dream to an
oak-panelled door marked with a legend she did not read. Within was an
office, with leather chairs, a large oak desk, a spittoon, and portraits
of grave legal gentlemen on the wall.

"This is Judge Whitman's office," explained the Honourable Dave. "He'll
let you stay here until the case is called."

"Is he the judge--before whom--the case is to be tried?" asked Honora.

"He surely is," answered the Honourable Dave. "Whitman's a good friend of
mine. In fact, I may say, without exaggeration, I had something to do
w