He barely flitted through her mind when she asked herself what did man's civilisation amount to, anyway, and why should women respect it? And, compared with the stupendous slaughter in Europe, a slaughter that would seem to be one of the periodicities of the world, since it is the composite expression of the individual male's desire to fight somebody just so often--what, in comparison with such a monstrous crime, would be the offence of making way with one obnoxious husband? Something over two years ago--when liquor began to put a fiery edge upon Mr. Balfame's temper--Mrs. Balfame had considered the question of divorce; but after several weeks of cool calculation and the exercise of her foresight upon the inevitable social consequences, she had put the idea definitely aside. It was incompatible with her plan of life. Only rich women, or women that were insignificant in great cities, or who possessed conquering gifts, or who were so advanced as to be indifferent, could afford the luxury of divorce. Her world was the eastern division of Brabant County, and while it prided itself upon its progressiveness, and even--among the younger women--had a gay set, and although suppressed scandals slid about like slimy monsters in a marsh, its foundations were inherited from the old Puritan stock, and it fairly reeked with ancient prejudices. It was a typical middle-class community with traditions, some of its blood too old, and made up of common human ingredients in varying proportions. Mrs. Balfame, enlightened by much reading and many matinees, applied the word _bourgeois_ to Elsinore with secret scorn, but with a sigh: conscious that all its prejudices were hers and that not for an instant could she continue to be its leader were she a divorced woman. Mrs. Balfame indulged in no dreams of sudden wealth. Elsinore was her world, and on the whole she was content, realising that life had not equipped her to lead the society of New York City. She liked to shop in Fifth Avenue--long since had she politely forgotten the mobs of Sixth,--to occupy an orchestra chair with a friend at a matinee, and take tea or chocolate at the fashionable retreats for such dissipations before returning to provincial Elsinore. There was a tacit agreement between herself and her husband that he should dine with his political friends in a certain restaurant behind a bar in Dobton, the county seat, on the Wednesday or Thursday evenings when she found it impossible to return to Elsinore before seven o'clock; an arrangement which he secretly approved of but invariably entered a protest against by coming home at two in the morning extremely drunk.