“What men do and what other women accept cannot change my idea of what constitutes marriage. I will not be a party to a contract kept only by one of the two interested. I have seen women whose husbands violated every canon of decency going on patiently, under the delusion that they were doing a virtuous thing. To my mind they were encouraging vice. Kisses represent feelings. One kisses because one loves. I could not kiss a man I did not love because it would be repulsive. One is loyal, not because of a sense of duty, but because one loves; or disloyal because one has ceased to love.” “Anyway, Cartice, don’t leave me or talk about leaving me. You are all I have in the world. Forgive me, and love me if you can. I feel mean enough without your contempt.” As he said this, Doring flung himself on the floor clasping her in his arms and began to weep. “He does not understand; he never will understand--he cannot. He thinks it is something to be forgiven and then to go on as before,” she said, mentally. Anyhow she went on, but not as before. In that hour her love for her husband had changed its form and face. It had become maternal. All hope that they could make the journey of life as companions on an equal footing was dead. No more painful experience can come to a proud woman than that of seeing that the man she has idealized must be propped up instead of leaned against. The days went relentlessly on for Cartice Doring, as days have a way of doing for everybody. One trouble had grown to proportions so huge that his hateful shape blotted out all the rest, and his name was Poverty. The bread of dependence is bitter. Every bite to her was heavy as lead. Civilization has many tortures; but it is doubtful if it has any more cruel than this. Every waking moment Cartice racked her brain in the effort to think of some means of earning money, and at night when she slept her dreams were full of horrors. Thoughts of the river obtruded themselves and were driven away only to come back more determined in aspect than before. Somewhere she had read that if every suicide would but wait twenty-four hours after determining to end life, deliverance would come. So she waited, and the worst depression would pass, and her courage come slowly back. Meantime her husband walked the street in his helpless way seeking employment, returning at night with the story of failure written on his face. Cartice had been used to a busy life, and the enforced idleness of those depressing days was more of a weariness to both flesh and spirit than the hardest labor would have been. In trying to escape from her own thoughts she sometimes walked long distances. One cold day she was accosted by a woman who asked her to buy some trifle she was selling. “I wish I could, but I cannot, for I have no money,” said Cartice.