“I don’t see much difference,” I said, “between the woman who runs away with a man and the woman who only stays at home because the man won’t run away with her.” “There’s still a difference between the woman who keeps her reputation and the woman who loses it. When women become reckless . . . It’s a big responsibility to give them the first push down the slope.” The short sunlight of late autumn was fading; and I busied myself with packing our luncheon-basket. As I had not asked for sympathy, I could not complain if none was offered. “If I give her the chance of divorcing me,” I said, “I’m not accountable for anything she does after that.” There was a long silence. Then O’Rane asked: “What will you do?” I had not thought; but, in that moment, I had a vision of the blue water, the close-packed green woods and the vivid fuchsia hedges of Lake House. “Go back to Ireland, I expect.” I was making enough clatter with plates and knives to convince the least attentive that my patience was exhausted; but O’Rane lay with his hands clasped behind his head, frowning a little at his own thoughts and wholly unmoved by my demonstration. “Will divorce make for Barbara’s happiness?,” he asked in a maddening drawl. “You can’t quite wash your hands of a woman you’ve married. You weren’t content, you see, with somebody of your own mould. Your wife had to be brilliant, beautiful, romantic, tragic. . . . You married Babs when you knew she’d been shaken to the depths of her soul by Jack Waring, when she’d been broken to the bottom of her heart by Eric Lane.” “I thought she’d had so much romance and tragedy that she’d be glad to settle down quietly.” “When she wasn’t in love with you? Has any one settled down quietly after gambling with death for nearly five years?” “I’d have forgiven anything if she’d told me!,” I cried, as we went back. We must have driven for an hour before he spoke again: “Well, George, if you want my advice, I should recommend you to burn Eric’s letter and pretend you’ve never seen it. Then begin again at the beginning.” “You imagine I can forget it?,” I asked. “If you think more of her and less of yourself. The bigger the crime, the more she must have been tempted: try to understand that instead of counting up the things a man has a ‘right’ to expect of his wife. Rights here, rights there! _Every one’s_ thinking too much of his individual rights, George! Every group of nations, every nation, almost every man and woman.” . . . 4 After two years I can appreciate O’Rane’s patience better than was possible at the time. I know now that he was distracted by a civil war of his own; but I was too much preoccupied to enquire why Sonia and the children were in Hampshire; I should have been aggrieved if any one else had presumed to be unhappy. “I suppose it’s all the same to you where we spend the night?,” I asked, several hours later, as we paused at a sign-post.