He now went on, "But I'm glad to have gone. I saw a great deal else there than your eccentric plant and the vacancy of mind of those sons of toil, cursed, soul-destroying toil. For one thing, I saw a woman of very great beauty. And that is always so much gained." "Oh yes," cried Marise, "that's so. I forgot that you could see that. I've grown so used to the fact that people here don't understand how splendidly handsome Nelly Powers is. Their taste doesn't run to the statuesque, you know. They call that grand silent calm of her, stupidness! Ever since 'Gene brought her here as a bride, a year after we came to live in Crittenden's, I have gone out of my way to look at her. You should see her hanging out the clothes on a windy day. One sculptured massive pose after another. But even to see her walk across the room and bend that shining head is thrilling." "I saw something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took his eyes from her." Marise was silent, startled by this shouting out of something she had preferred not to formulate. "Vincent, you see too much," said Mr. Welles resignedly. The phrase ran from his tongue as though it were a familiar one. Marise said slowly, "I've sometimes thought that Frank Warner did go to the Powers' a good deal, but I haven't wanted to think anything more." "What possible reason in the world have you for not wanting to?" asked Marsh with the most authentic accent of vivid and astonished curiosity. "What reason . . . ?" she repeated blankly. He said dispassionately, "I don't like to hear _you_ make such a flat, conventional, rubber-stamp comment. Why in the world shouldn't she love a fine, ardent, _living_ man, better than that knotty, dead branch of a husband? A beautiful woman and a living, strong, vital man, they belong together. Whom God hath joined . . . Don't try to tell me that your judgment is maimed by the Chinese shoes of outworn ideas, such as the binding nature of a mediaeval ceremony. That doesn't marry anybody, and you know it. If she's really married to her husband, all right. But if she loves another man, and knows in her heart that she would live a thousand times more fully, more deeply with him . . . why, she's _not_ married to her husband, and nothing can make her. You know that!"