"Lucille, _laissez-moi; je vous sonnerai plus tard_!" Mrs. Massingale said directly, her eyes on her husband's face. She went to the door, closing it and came swiftly back. "Harold, what is it?" she cried breathlessly. "Are we ruined?" "No!" he said, with a touch of irony in his voice. "No; it is not money matters!" She had seen the specter of bankruptcy before her eyes at his incomprehensible entrance. She shuddered and regained her self-control with a sigh, closing her wrapper more tightly over the disarray at her breast, as if suddenly aware of impropriety in the presence of this man who had entered her rooms after years. "Sit down!" he said, straddling a chair and resting his arms on the back. "Clara, I am very--I am exceedingly unhappy!" At the sound of his voice, more than from the authority in his manner, her alarm flashed up anew. She seated herself hesitatingly, scenting instinctively the approach of some formless danger. For a second she had a grotesque thought, caused by the sudden irruption on her cherished privacy, that he was going to ask her to surrender her own apartment and return to his. "Well, well! What is it?" she asked, finally prepared to resist such brutality. "Clara, I want my liberty!" She relaxed a little. His liberty? She had never for a moment opposed that! "This life I am leading is a ghastly mockery! I want it to end! I want to be able to lead my own life. I want a divorce!" She rose in her seat, stretched out her hand and stammered: "What?" "I have come to tell you that I am resolved to divorce!" "Divorce!" All at once she fell back, limp and swooning, her head fallen forward on her breast. He rose, searched among the bottles, found smelling-salts, and methodically, not quite convinced, held them to her nostrils. Then, when she started, he placed the bottle on her lap and resumed his seat. Her first emotion, on returning from the dizziness which had not been altogether assumed, was one of profound astonishment. After almost twenty years of married life, when she felt the completest security, when her life had run smoothest along the roads she herself had directed, all at once everything was threatened, without her being able to perceive at what point she had committed an error. "You said--divorce?" she said weakly, staring at him. "Yes! I have come to ask you to make no opposition, if I make whatever provision you desire for yourself." Before the detail of his manner she could no longer cherish any doubt. She became suddenly the woman of astuteness and cunning that she really was, gathering every energy to ward off the blow. "You are not serious! It is impossible that you can be serious!" she began. She rose quickly, and gliding to the door, assured herself that Lucille was not eavesdropping. "I never was more serious in my life!"