“That’s the most wicked thing you’ve said!” exclaimed her visitor with indignation; “you’ve lost your mind, Margaret; you can’t expect happiness feeling as you do! There, I know you’ll despise me, but I’m an old woman, and I had to speak my mind!” Margaret raised herself on her elbow and pointed an accusing finger. “Speak it,” she exclaimed with bitterness, “but--were you ever in my place? Were you ever married to a man like my husband, a man who was openly unfaithful to you--who was the talk and the jest of the town because of another woman? Were you ever made to feel that you were bought, a mere chattel?” Mrs. Allestree looked at her in silence, her fine old face grew pale, her lips trembled. Margaret sank down again, her hand on her heart. “You never were!” she said scornfully. Mrs. Allestree wiped away her tears. “I meant well,” she said, “but despise me, Margaret, I deserve it!” “I don’t despise you, I think you a dear,” Margaret retorted, softening; “only you do not in the least understand. It’s all right for you to be so good and so pious, but I can’t be!” “You’ve made me a wretched old hypocrite!” said Mrs. Allestree; “oh, Margaret, you can be just what you want to be, you are so clever, so beautiful, so charming!” Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “I’m a miserable sinner, dear heart, it’s no use to try to reform me.” “You are wilful! Oh, child, it’s for you I speak, you’ll regret it!” She bent forward and patted the limp white hand that hung over the side of the lounge. From the bottom of her heart she wished she knew how to reach her, but she had been curiously defeated. “You’ll regret it all your life; we women never can break the bonds. Marriage is an incident in a man’s life; God didn’t mean that women should feel the same about it.” “A great many do break the bonds,” said Margaret eagerly, “and begin all over again; why shouldn’t I?” she spoke with the force of longing; hour after hour she had argued thus with herself, yet at a word her soul leaped up unconvinced and the battle began all over again; that inexorable law which binds a woman’s life and fixes it in the orbit of eternity had laid hold upon her. “A great many do?” Mrs. Allestree’s thin lips tightened and she looked away. Then she rose and gathered up her gloves and her parasol and her spectacles. “Too many, and what do people say of most of them?” she added severely, regaining a hold upon her shaken convictions. Margaret bit her lip, there was a little spot of color in each cheek, her heavy eyes shone with feverish defiance. “I wish I were like you, I wish I had lived your life, I should like to be good if I could!” she said slowly, without mockery. Mrs. Allestree turned red. “Don’t, Margaret! I’m really not the Pharisee or the Levite, only I wanted to help you!” “I meant just what I said,” Margaret retorted quietly; “but I can’t be religious, I--I must be loved, I must be happy, I should die just being good!”