My answering smile and pressure of the hand were friendly, but cautiously so, for I felt I was still on thin ice. I opened the door for her. We shook hands again. Our eyes met. I think it must have given each of us a shock to see in the other’s face the polite, distant look of strangers parting. How easy it is for two to become like one--and when they are, how impossible it seems that they could ever be aliens. How easy it is for two that are as one to become utter strangers; the sea is wide, and its currents curve rapidly away from each other. “Rossiter,” said I--he was at work in the anteroom, “take Mrs. Loring to her carriage, please.” So--she was gone; I was free! XIII Not a shadow of doubt lingered. She was gone; I was free. Her manner had been the manner of finality. Her reluctance and her sadness were little more than the convention of mourning which human beings feel compelled to display on mortuary occasions of all kinds. Beneath the crepe I saw a not discontented resignation, a conviction of the truth that life together was impossible for her and me. My male readers--those who have a thinking apparatus and use it--will probably wonder, as I did then, that she had overlooked certain obvious advantages to be gained through refusing to divorce me. She knew me well enough to be certain I would not compel her to go to America and live with me, but if she insisted would let her stay in Europe or wander where she pleased. This would have given her all the advantages of widowhood. Free, with plenty of money, she could have led her own life, without ever having to consult the conveniences and caprices of a husband. It seemed to me singularly stupid of her to resign this signal advantage, to tie herself to a husband she could not ignore, a husband she already saw would bore her, as poseurs invariably bore each other--to tie herself to such a man with no compensating advantage but a title. Indeed, so stupid did it seem that from the moment she began to waver about confirming the divorce I all but lost hope of freedom.