"Judicial separation," he finally said, "has always struck me as begging the question. It denies liberty and yet winks at license. A good marriage ought to be guarded and a bad one broken." "That," replied von Klausen, "is the American view." "Not at all. We have all sorts of views--and there is one great trouble. You can get a divorce for nothing in Nevada, and you can't get it for anything in South Carolina. The South Carolina result is that they have had to pass a law there removing illegitimacy as a bar to succession." "Nevertheless," said von Klausen, "except for Japan, there are more divorces in the United States than in any other country in the world. I was told, while I was in Washington, that the American statistics were--they showed seventy-nine divorces to every hundred thousand of your population. Your divorces increase more rapidly than your population; they increase more rapidly than your marriage-rate." "I don't know about that," said Stainton; "although I believe that I have seen some such figures given somewhere, but I am clear on one point: the man that treats his wife badly ought not to be allowed the chance to have a wife any longer." He looked at Muriel, seated at his side; he smiled and patted her hand as it lay on the arm of her chair. "Don't you think so, dear?" he asked. Muriel smiled in answer. "Of course I do," said she. "Don't you, Captain von Klausen?" The Austrian's face remained serious. "I am of the religion of my country," he said. "Eh?" said Stainton. "Oh, I beg your pardon." "Not at all. Please." Von Klausen waived religious immunity. "I govern myself one way, but I do not object to hear the reasons why other people should choose other ways. Your way--your American way of divorce--is one of the peculiarities of your great nation, and so I studied it much while I lived there. If you permit, sir, to say it: the figures do not well bear out the boast that the American husband is the best husband. So, Mrs. Stainton?" "But he is, just the same," protested Muriel. "What do the figures show?" asked Jim. "That two divorces are granted to wives to every one granted husbands." "With all the respect to the best wife in the world," chuckled Stainton, as he again patted Muriel's hand, "that is largely due to the fact that the average American is so good a husband that, innocent as he may be, he pretends to be the guilty party." Von Klausen's eyes twinkled shrewdly. "Is it not a little," he enquired, "because the disgrace of being judged a guilty husband is easier to bear than the ridicule that is involved in being unable to keep the love of one's wife?" "Perhaps it is; perhaps it is," admitted Stainton. "But your figures do not prove anything against us as husbands, Captain. The only reason that similar figures don't show the men of other countries to be worse husbands than we are--if, indeed, they don't show it--is that the laws of other countries simply do not permit such easy divorce."