“I can’t, dear, for many reasons,” and Cartice glanced at her well-worn gown, and thought of the hopeless condition of her wardrobe. “Clothes, eh?” said the other, going straight to the point. “Don’t worry on that score, I am handy with a needle and can help you tinker up some of your things to look quite fine. I can toss up a delicious little bonnet, too.” “But I have no heart in anything,” said Cartice. “You don’t know all--no; you don’t know all.” “I know more than you think I do. I know precisely what it is to be pitifully disappointed in one’s husband, to find that he is the opposite of what one thought him, to lose confidence in his ability, his manliness, his loyalty and his love.” “Yes, yes, that is the hardest of all,” wailed Cartice, shaken to the soul to learn that what she believed hidden was written in big letters on the outer walls of her life, as it were. “That, too, you must throw off,” said the philosophic Butterfly. “There are few wives who haven’t had some of that kind of experience. For the most part men are abominable wretches, their whole lives made up of deceit and lies. It hurt me cruelly, cruelly when I found it out and just had to believe it in the face of not wanting to; but now, well--I have taught myself not to care very much.” “It seems to me that a wife only ceases to care when she ceases to love, and then she ought to give her husband up entirely,” said Mrs. Doring. “Yes, it is true; when one doesn’t care it is because one doesn’t love one’s husband any more. Of course, it would be honester, more moral and self-respecting to leave him, but we women are mostly tied up by different kinds of chains, so that no matter how wide our eyes are opened we usually go right on pretending we don’t see, and so become hypocrites, too. The whole fabric seems to be pretty much a warp and woof of lies. But I don’t puzzle much over problems as big and hard as that. I haven’t the head for it. I just edge along the easiest way I can, and leave the things I don’t understand, and couldn’t set right if I did, for others to puzzle over and fix up if they can.” Cartice was astonished at the Butterfly’s hard trials and airy method of ignoring them. We are always astonished to learn that another has had the same kind of a load to carry that we have borne, all the more if that other has carried it gaily. It is common to believe our own experiences unique.