Clara was never so amazed in her life. She was too excited to move from the spot, and she gave vent to her horror of his baseness in most unmeasured terms, ending a volley of eloquence with a fervent expression of gratitude that there had been no children to perpetuate such moral degradation. “Children?” he sneered. “You need not count on their advent in your case, under any circumstances. Children are born of the body, not of the soul, or you might be the mother of an army of phantoms—the only kind you will ever have. That I can promise you as a physician.” “I despise your wisdom as a physician,” retorted Clara, her face crimson. “You should have only brutes for patients. Children, in my opinion, are not well born, who are not the offspring of the soul as well as of the body. I have not the slightest fear that, if I should ever—.” Clara stopped short, angry with herself that she should lower herself to answer at all. “If you should ever marry a soul, you mean you would prove very prolific,” he said; but even he was conscious of going too far, and he added, “but I am sorry my temper has made me say rude things to you, Clara. I am really ashamed of myself, but I know you will not forgive me. But no matter now. One thing you forget. The divorce I get from you, not you from me, remember that. I shall be free to marry, ‘as though the defendant were actually dead,’ but the defendant will ‘not be free to marry until the plaintiff be actually dead;’ so the document will read, madam,” and with these words, he left the library just as Miss Charlotte entered. She asked him if he would be in at dinner. “I shall try hard to do so,” he said. “I would not deprive madam of the pleasure of her husband’s presence. Ta! ta! _mon ange_,” and he actually kissed his hand to Clara, who stood staring at him as at a monster. When the door closed behind him she told Charlotte all he had said. “What then does a divorce mean?” asked Charlotte. “How can you remain bound to him, when he marries another wife. It is not common sense.” “No,” answered Clara. “It is not common sense; it is law, it seems;” and she poured forth a storm of indignant protest against laws made by men without the consent of women. Miss Charlotte replied: