"Perhaps it may be only a temporary substitute for something better--say for more wholesome and more honest social conditions where the proposition for mating and the selection of a mate may lie as freely with your sex as with mine. "Until then I know of nothing more honest and more sensible than to undo the wrong that ignorance and inexperience has accomplished. No woman's moral or spiritual salvation is dependent upon her wearing the fetters of a marriage abhorred. Such a stupid sacrifice is unthinkable to modesty and decency, and is repulsive to common sense. And any god who is supposed to demand that of humanity is not the true God, but is as grotesque and false as any African idol or any deity ever worshipped by Puritan or Pagan or by any orthodox assassin of free minds since the first murder was perpetrated on account of creed. "You are entitled to divorce. I don't know whether I am or not, having done this thing. Nobody likes to endure unhappy consequences. I don't. But it was my own doing and I have no ground for complaint. "You, however, have. You ought to be free of me. Of course, I'd be very glad to have my freedom; I shall not lie about it; but the difference is that you deserve yours and I don't. But I'll be very grateful if you care to give it to me. "Don't write any more bitterly than you can help. I don't believe it really affords you any satisfaction; and it depresses me more than you could realise. I know only too well what I have been and wherein I have failed so miserably. Let me forget it whenever I can, Winifred. And if, for me, there remains any chance, any outlook, be generous enough to let me try to take it. "Your husband, "C. BAILEY." The consequences of this letter did not seem to be very fortunate. There came a letter from her so bitter and menacing that a cleverer man might have read in it enough of menace between the lines to forearm him with caution at least. But Clive merely read it once and destroyed it and tried to forget it. * * * * * It was not until some time afterward that, gradually, some instinct in him awoke suspicion. But for a long while he was not perfectly sure that he was being followed. However, when he could no longer doubt it, and when the lurking figures and faces of at least two of the men who dogged him everywhere had become sufficiently familiar to him, he wrote a short note to his wife asking for an explanation. But he got none--principally because his wife had already sailed. The effect of Winifred's letters on an impressionable, sensitive, and self-distrustful character, was never very quickly effaced.