No doubt, if Edna and I had been living under the same roof the idea of divorce would have taken form, actively definite form, long before. But we had no home to be a House of Hate. We did not hate each other; we bored each other. And as we were not poor, we lived far enough apart not to annoy each other in the least. I cheerfully paid any ransom she exacted for leaving me free--and you may be sure she was not inexpensive. She had her own fortune--and it gave her quite an income--but she husbanded that. She insisted upon state and equipage, not to mention such small matters as stockings at fifty dollars a pair and chemises at three hundred dollars apiece--for, she knew how lovely she was and demanded for her beautiful body the most beautiful garments that could be devised by French ingenuity at combining cost and simplicity. I was--by instinct rather than by avowed principles--thoroughly old-fashioned in my family ideas. Indeed, I still am; and I say this with no apology. It may be that woman will some day develop another and higher sphere for herself. But first she would do well--in my humbly heretical opinion--to learn to fill the sphere she now rattles round in like one dry pea in a ten-gallon can. I want to see a few more women up to the modern requirements for wife and mother. I want to see a few more women making a living without using their sex charms--a few less ’tending the typewriter with one eye while the other and busier is on the lookout for a husband. I believe in emancipation of women--in votes for women--in all that sort of thing. The one and only way to learn to swim is in the water. I am sick and tired of woman the irresponsible, woman the cozener and milker of man, woman the dead weight upon man, and drawing the pay of a housewife and shirking all a housewife’s duties. So, you see, I am the friend of woman--not of woman’s vanity and laziness and passion for parasiteism, but of woman’s education and self-respect and independence. I was thoroughly old-fashioned. My notion of wife was the independent, self-respecting equal of her husband. That is, I had the typical American husband’s ideal--the ideal that dates from the pioneer days of no property and of labor for all, the ideal the American man still lives up to, the one that enables woman to betray him. And, having this ideal, I never permitted myself--no, not even when I spoke to her the contrary in words--I never permitted myself to _feel_ that my wife was not in the main what she should be. If you have borne me company thus far, gentle reader, turn away now. For, dreadful things are coming. I said to Armitage: “Your sister--she’s still in the country?” “No, she’s abroad,” replied he. “She’s visiting friends in Budapest. Later on she’s to yacht in the East Mediterranean--she and the Horace Armstrongs and Beechman--and--” He gave several names I do not now recall.