and I did offer, but when he said no, I was glad, for Fleecy was all I had left. If Bertie had been here to-night, he would have nursed and doctored her just as you did, instead of getting cross like Mauma. Sometimes I hate Mauma!” she broke off with a vicious snap of her little regular teeth. For a long time Mrs. Leith talked on, dwelling on the attractions and perfections of the man from whom she was seeking a divorce, until finally her companion, unable to keep down her curiosity any longer, said abruptly: “I can’t help asking, Mrs. Leith, why you want to be divorced from such a man as that.” “Want to be!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet, and forgetting even Fleecy, who fell to the floor. “Want to be? Why, I should think you could see that it is killing me! Do I look like a person doing what she wants to do? If you had seen me a year ago you would not say that. Look at my poor thin arms,” pulling up her sleeve. “They used to be so plump and round that Bertie never tired of kissing and praising them. And look at my face, so white and pasty, when I used to have a color like a rose! Oh, I’m glad he can’t see me now! I’m glad he doesn’t know how I have changed!” “Then why do you get the divorce?” Mrs. Bryan couldn’t help saying. “You are doing it, and not he--aren’t you? What makes you do it?” “Because he wants it,” she answered with a look of defiance. She expected nothing else but that Mrs. Bryan would hold with all her other friends, and she wanted to show her, at once, that she did not care. “And why does he want it?” “Because he is tired of me--simply that. No one but me can make allowances for him, and I don’t expect it. I know you are shocked and indignant and all that, but you may save yourself the trouble. It is terrible and unfortunate for me, of course, but I can see, if no one else does, that it is not unnatural. He is highly cultivated and intellectual, and I am not a companion for him. It was long before I would acknowledge it, but I have looked it in the face at last. I was never worthy of him--but oh, while he loved me, it didn’t matter in the least that I was so inferior to him! And he did love me--he did! he did!--as much as he can love anybody--as much, I do believe, as he will ever love that beautiful, wicked woman he is going to marry.” “Going to marry!” exclaimed Mrs. Bryan, almost breathless, but the little creature who stood near by with her cold hands pressed against her burning cheeks, and her excited eyes fixed on the fire, paid no attention to the reflection of astonishment in her voice. “Yes, going to marry,” she said. “That is why he was so determined to have the divorce. I knew he had begun to weary of me; I knew I had nothing in me to keep the love of a great creature such as he is, but I think he would have stayed with me and let me go on loving him, at least, if he had not seen that widow, who made up her mind to have him the moment she laid eyes on him, and saw how far above other men he was.”