My women readers will understand her. A man cannot appreciate how hampered a woman of the lady class is without a legitimate male attachment of some kind--a husband, a brother, or a father in constant attendance, ready for use the instant the need arises. Our whole society is built upon the theory that woman is the dependent, the appendage of man. Freedom is impossible for a woman, except at a price almost no woman voluntarily pays. To have any measure of freedom a woman must bind herself to some man, and the bondage has to be cruel indeed not to be preferable to the so-called freedom of the unattached female. Thus it was not altogether snobbishness, it may not have been chiefly snobbishness, that moved Edna to transfer herself to a husband who would be a more or less unpleasant actuality. She had to have a man. She wished to live abroad and to be in fashionable society. She chose shrewdly. I imagine, from several things she said, that she had measured Frascatoni with calm impartiality, had discovered many serious disadvantages in him as husband to a woman of her fondness for her own way. But estimating the disadvantages at their worst, the balance still tipped heavily toward him. I am glad I was not born a woman. I pity the women of our day, bred and educated in the tastes of men, yet compelled to be dependents, and certain of defeat in a finish contest with man. Though there was now no reasonable doubt of Edna’s having the decree of divorce made final, I, through overcaution or oversensitiveness as to Mary Kirkwood’s rights, or what motive you please, would not let myself leave London until a cable from my lawyers in New York informed me that the decree had been entered and that I was legally free. The newspapers had given much space to our affairs. It was assumed that I had come abroad “to make last desperate efforts to win back the beautiful and charming wife, the favorite of fashionable European society.” Stories had been published, giving in minute detail accounts of the bribes I had offered. And when the final decree was entered, my chagrin and fury were pictured vividly.