It was interesting to hear her, determined, self-reliant character though she was, thus confess to the universal weakness of the female sex. Women, not trained to act for themselves, can hardly overcome this fundamental defect. That is why you so often see an apparently, and probably, superior woman weaken and yield where a distinctly ordinary man would be strong and would march ahead. The trouble with Edna was that she had no definite man behind her, spurring her on to action. In all she had done from the beginning of our married life she had felt that she had me to fall back on, should emergency arise--an unconscious dependence, one she would have scornfully denied, but none the less real. In this affair there was no man to fall back on. I saw this. Yet I refrained from giving her the support she needed and all but asked. Her cry, “If I had some one to advise me,” meant, “If I had some one to give me the courage to act.” I knew what it meant. But eager though I was to be quit of her, I would not give her the thrust toward divorce that would have put into her the courage of anger and of the feeling that she was a martyr to my brutality. Why did I hold myself in check? Candidly, I do not know. I distrust the suggestion that it may have been due to essential goodness of heart. At any rate, I did restrain myself. She--naturally enough--misunderstood; and she proceeded to explain it to the gratifying of her vanity. I saw in her eyes, in her way of treating me, that she thought me her secret adorer, convinced of my unworthiness, of her god-to-mortal superiority; not daring openly to resist her desire to be free from me, but opposing it humbly, silently. I saw that she pitied me. Did this add to my anger? Not in the least. I have a perhaps queer sense of humor. I rather welcomed the chance to get a little amusement out of a situation otherwise dreary and infuriating. Curiously enough, it was Armitage who came to her rescue--and to mine.