_She._ It did not me always. It was while I was in Britany--where I got this peasant dress; isn't it quaint?--that I learned to know the sea. It judged me; it reiterated one burden over and over until it seemed to me that I should go mad; yet at the same time its calmness gave me self-control. If there had been the slightest trace of anger or relenting in its accusations, I could have turned away easily enough, and shaken its influence all off. But it was like an awful tribunal before which I had to stand silent, and review my past as interpreted by inexorable justice,--with no palliations, no shams, nothing but honest truth. But why should I say all this rigmarole to you? You must be amused,--if you are not too much bored, that is. _He._ On the contrary, I thank you very much. _She._ For what? _He._ First, for your confidence in me; and second, for telling me an experience so like my own. It was not the sea, but circumstances that delivered me over to myself,--a long, slow convalescence, in which I, too, had an interview with the Nemesis of truth, and found a carefully built structure of shams and self-deception go down as mist before the sun. The most frightful being in the world to encounter is one's estranged better self. _She._ That is true. No one but myself could have persuaded me that it was I who was to blame. The more I was argued with, the more I believed myself a martyr, and my husband-- _He._ Your husband? _She._ I have betrayed myself. I am not mademoiselle, but madame. _He._ But I see no-- _She._ No ring? True; I returned that to my husband before I went to Britany. _He._ And in Britany? _She._ In Britany I would have given the world to have it back again. _He._ But your husband? Did he accept it so easily? _She._ What else can a man do when his wife casts him off? _He._ Do? Oh, it is considered proper in such cases, I believe, for him to make a violent pretence of not accepting his freedom. _She._ You seem to be sure he considered it freedom! _He._ Pardon me. I forgot for the moment that you were his wife. _She._ Compliments do not please me. _He._ Then you are not a woman. _She._ Will you be serious? _He._ Why should I be--at a ball? _She._ Because I choose. _He._ Oh, good and sufficient reason! _She._ But tell me soberly,--you are a man,--what could my husband have done? _He._ Do you mean to make my ideas standards by which to try him? _She._ Perhaps yes; perhaps no. At least tell me what you think. _He._ A man need not accept a dismissal too easily. _She._ But what then? _He._ He might have followed; he might have argued. It is scarcely possible that you alone were to blame. Was there nothing in which he might have acknowledged himself wrong,--nothing with which he should reproach himself?