I knew an American lady once who used to bore me with long accounts of the brutalities exercised upon her by her husband. She had instituted divorce proceedings against him. The trial came on, and she was highly successful. We all congratulated her, and then for some months she dropped out of my life. But there came a day when we again found ourselves together. One of the problems of social life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman’s desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever—but this by the way. Of course, I began to talk to her about her former husband. I asked her how he was getting on. She replied that she thought he was very comfortable. “Married again?” I suggested. “Yes,” she answered. “Serve him right,” I exclaimed, “and his wife too.” She was a pretty, bright-eyed little woman, my American friend, and I wished to ingratiate myself. “A woman who would marry such a man, knowing what she must have known of him, is sure to make him wretched, and we may trust him to be a curse to her.” My friend seemed inclined to defend him. “I think he is greatly improved,” she argued. “Nonsense!” I returned, “a man never improves. Once a villain, always a villain.” “Oh, hush!” she pleaded, “you mustn’t call him that.” “Why not?” I answered. “I have heard you call him a villain yourself.” “It was wrong of me,” she said, flushing. “I’m afraid he was not the only one to be blamed; we were both foolish in those days, but I think we have both learned a lesson.” I remained silent, waiting for the necessary explanation. “You had better come and see him for yourself,” she added, with a little laugh; “to tell the truth, I am the woman who has married him. Tuesday is my day, Number 2, K— Mansions,” and she ran off, leaving me staring after her. I believe an enterprising clergyman who would set up a little church in the Strand, just outside the Law Courts, might do quite a trade, re-marrying couples who had just been divorced. A friend of mine, a respondent, told me he had never loved his wife more than on two occasions—the first when she refused him, the second when she came into the witness-box to give evidence against him. “You are curious creatures, you men,” remarked a lady once to another man in my presence. “You never seem to know your own mind.”