"Doctor," said the mother, "you leave his letter here where I can get it. I'm going over there and pack everything that rightfully may be called hers--I mean her dresses and trinkets--and such things as have in them no particular memory of him. They shall come home. Then I'll lock up the house." The Doctor squinted up his eyes thoughtfully and said slowly, "Well, that seems kind. I don't suppose you need read her the whole letter. Just tell her he is going to ask for a divorce--tell her it's incompatibility. But his letter isn't important." The Doctor sighed. "Grant ought really to stay here another week--maybe we can stretch it to ten days--and let her have all the responsibility she'll take. It'll help her over the first bridge. Kenyon is taking care of Lila--I suppose?" The Doctor rose, stood by his wife and said as he found her hand: "Poor Laura--poor Laura--and Lila! You know when I had her down town with me yesterday, in the hallway leading to Joe Calvin's office, she met Tom--" The Doctor looked away for a moment. "It was pretty tough--her little heartbreak when he went by her without taking her up!" The wife did not reply. The husband with his arm about her walked toward the door. "You can't tell me, my dear, that Tom isn't paying--I know how that sort of thing gets under his skin--he's too sensitive not to imagine all it means to the child." Mrs. Nesbit's face hardened and her husband saw her bitterness. "I know, my dear--I know how you feel--I feel all that, and yet in my very heart I'm sorry for poor Tom. He's swapping substance for shadow so recklessly--not only in this, not merely with Laura--but with everything--everything." "Good Lord, Jim, I don't see how you can agonize over a wool-dyed scoundrel like that--perhaps you have some tears for that Fenn hussy, too!" "Well," squeaked the Doctor soberly--"I knew her father--a lecherous old beast who brought her up without restraint or morals--with a greedy philosophy pounded into her by example every day of her life until she was seventeen years old. There's something to be said--even for her, my dear--even for her." "Well, Jim Nesbit," answered his wife, "I'll go a long way with you in your tomfoolery, but so long as I've got to draw the line somewhere I draw it right there." The Doctor looked at the floor. "I suppose so--" he sighed, then lifted his head and said: "I was just trying to think of all the sorrows that come into the world, of all the tragedies I ever knew, and I have concluded that this tragedy of divorce when it comes like this--as it has come to our daughter--is the greatest tragedy in the world. To love as she loved and to find every anchor to which she tied the faith of her life rotten, to have her heart seared with faithlessness--to see her child--her flesh and blood scorned, to have her very soul spat upon--that's the essence of sorrow, my dear."