He went home. He found his father and mother playing double Canfield and wrangling over it as usual. They were disturbed by his manner. He would not tell them what was the matter and left them to their game. It interested them no more. It seemed so unimportant whether the cards fell right or not. The points were not worth the excitement. Their son was playing solitaire, and it was not coming out at all. They discussed the possible reasons for his gloom. There were so many. “I wish he'd get married to some nice girl,” sighed Mrs. Dyckman. A mother is pretty desperate when she wants to surrender her son to another woman. CHAPTER XXV Kedzie made a bad night of it. She hated her loneliness. She hated her room. She hated her maid. She wanted to live in the Dyckman palace and have a dozen maids and a pair of butlers to boss around, and valets, and a crest on her paper, and invitations pouring in from people whose pictures were in “the social world.” She wanted to snub somebody and show certain folks what was what. The next morning she was sure of only one thing, and that was that Dyckman had asked her to be his wife; and be his wife she would, no matter what it cost. She wondered how she could get rid of Gilfoyle, whom she looked upon now as nothing less than an abductor. He was one of those “cadets” the papers had been full of a few years before, who lured young girls to ruin under the guise of false marriages and then sold them as “white slaves.” Kedzle's wrath was at the fact that Gilfoyle was not legally an abductor. She would have been glad merely to be ruined, and she would have rejoiced at the possibility of a false marriage. In the movies the second villain only pretended to be a preacher, and then confessed his guilt. But such an easy solution was not for Kedzie. New York City had licensed Gilfoyle's outrage; the clerk had sold her to him for two dollars; the Municipal Building was the too, too solid witness. She felt a spiritual solace in the fact that she had not had a religious marriage. The sacrament was only municipal and did not count. Her wedding had lacked the blessing of the duly constituted ministry; therefore it was sacrilegious; therefore it was her conscientious duty to undo the pagan knot as quickly as possible. She reverted to the good old way of the Middle Ages. There was no curse of divorce then, and indeed there was small need of it, since annulment could usually be managed on one religious ground or another, or if not, people went about their business as if it had been managed. Kedzie felt absolved of any fault of selfishness now, and justified in taking any steps necessary to the punishment of Gilfoyle. _Religion_ is a large, loose word, and it can be made to fit any motive; but once assumed it seems to strengthen every resolution, to chloroform mercy and hallow any means to the self-sanctified end. What people would shrink from as inhuman they constantly embrace as divine.