About an hour after dinner Edna called me to the telephone and asked me to come to her. I found her in high excitement, her color vivid, her manner nervous beyond its natural vivacity even as now expanded upon the best Continental models. “I got rid of my guests,” said she, “and sent for you as soon as I could. Have you heard?” “About von Biestrich?” said I. “It is hideous!--hideous!” she cried. “I who have kept my name unsullied--I who have----” “I’m sure of that,” I interrupted. “I’m dead tired and, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go home.” She caught me by the arm. “Godfrey, you think this was what I had in mind. I swear to you----” “I’m sure you’ve been all that a wife is expected to be,” said I, in my usual manner of good-natured raillery. “And I’m also sure you would wait until you were free, and would deliberate very carefully before deciding----” “Godfrey, how can you!” cried she, in her most exaggerated tone for outraged spirituality. “Have you _no_ heart? Have you no respect for me--your wife, the mother of your daughter?” “Have I not said I did not suspect you?” remonstrated I. “Why so agitated, my dear? Do you wish to make me begin to suspect?” She shrank and began to cool down. “I’ve never had such an experience before,” she apologized. “I don’t know how to take it.” “It’s nothing--nothing,” I declared. “I give you my word of honor that if I were free I should not consider marrying that German.” “I believe you.” I put out a friendly hand. “Good night.” “This ends all talk of divorce,” said she. I dropped my hand. “I don’t see that the situation is changed in the least.” “That’s because you are not a woman,” replied she. “You can’t appreciate how I feel.” “You wished to be free before this paragraph appeared. You still wish to be free.” “Oh, _how_ can you be so insensible!” cried she, all unstrung again and, I could not but see, genuinely so. “I _never_ could face the scandal of a divorce. I didn’t realize. It would kill me. How _did_ Hilda face it?--and all these other nice women? I should hide and never show my face again.” She was agitating me so wildly that I felt I could not much longer conceal it. “I must go,” said I, pretending to yawn. “Sleep on it. Perhaps to-morrow you’ll feel differently.” She tried to detain me, but I broke away and fled. To be almost free and then to have freedom snatched away! Not out of reach, but where it can be reached easily if one will simply stretch out his hand somewhat ruthlessly. By no means so ruthless as my wife had been a score of times in gaining her ends without regard to me. Why not be ruthless? Had she not been ruthless? Had she not given me the right to compel her to free me? More, did she not herself wish to be free? And was she not now restrained, not by consideration for me, not by any decent instinct whatsoever, but solely by a snobbish groveling fear of public opinion?--a senseless fear, too?