Mrs. Meeks would not have deliberately made herself, or permitted any one else to make comparisons between her husband and Uncle Josh, whose outward uncouthness removed him leagues distant from his master. Yet, with that gentleman's last muttered expression smarting in her ears, she quailed at the suggestion of a spiritual likeness between the two beings in their antipodal tweed and jeans. Floating in upon her disturbed mind came a certain rude epigram which she had heard in the kitchen years ago when, a tiny girl, she was playing about the door, and had remembered because it struck her as being funny: "All men's tar off de same stick." "True!" said Mrs. Meeks bitterly, the tears falling now without disguise. "Men are all alike. I thought Robert was different. And our life together was to be a heaven upon earth? Well, this is the end of it all. I cannot stand his temper--I will not stand it!" How far her resentful musings would have extended if she had been left a while longer in that worst of solitudes, the loneliness of affronted dignity, is uncertain, for her tears were suddenly checked by sounds of visitors. A keen-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman alighted at the door from an open carriage and made her way in without ceremony. Mrs. Meeks started up with intent to escape, but settled back in her chair again as her visitor entered with the little whirl and rush that characterizes the movements of a lively, excitable woman. Her sharp black eyes took in the situation at a glance; the half-arranged room, Mrs. Meek's dishabille, her despondent attitude and the traces of tears. She advanced quickly and put out both hands, exclaiming in a voice of mingled affection and curiosity: "Linda, what is the matter?" "Oh, Louise, for once I am sorry to see you!" These two women were lifelong friends; friends in the sense in which Virginians understand the term, their relations being of the sort that involves the frankest self-disclosure, and an immediate discussion of every important circumstance entering into their experience. "Now, my dear," said Louise Gourlay, in a husky, emphatic voice, which to her torment she could never soften, "Providence sent me here this morning. I think too much of you not to understand at once what ails you. Mr. Meeks has been abusing you!" Mrs. Meeks blushed and tried to look indignant, but only succeeded in looking unhappy. "There is no use in talking about it," she said, bracing herself to encounter opposition. "Some things ought not to be talked about. It cannot help any. I can't go back and be a girl again." There was a slight pause and a struggle after control, and then she broke out with a sob: "Oh, Louise, why did I marry?"