intention to call
this evening, if only to ask after your health."

"I could not have received you," said Gertrude.

"You find it less difficult here?"

"Less humiliating. I'm not, at least, receiving a husband who wishes to
plead for reconciliation--on intolerable grounds."

"May I offer you a chair? Better still--why not come to the study? We're
so much less likely to be disturbed."

She accepted my suggestion with a slight nod, and herself led the way.

"Now, Gertrude," I resumed, when she had consented to an easy-chair and
had permitted me to close the door, "whatever the situation and
misunderstandings between us, can't we discuss them"--and I ventured a
smile--"more informally, in a freer spirit?"

She caught me up. "Freer! But I understand--less disciplined. How very
like you, Ambrose. How unchanged you are."

"And you, Gertrude! It's a compliment you should easily forgive."

She preferred to ignore it. "Miss Blake," she announced, "has just been
with me for an hour."

She waited the effect of this. The effect was considerable, plunging me
into dark amazement and conjecture. Not daring to make the tiniest guess
as to the result of so fantastic an interview, I was left not merely
tongue-tied but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beggared
me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal humiliation of alms
withheld or bestowed.

"Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious mixed charm--so
subtle and so deeply uncivilized--I can see, of course, why she has
bewitched you," said Gertrude reflectively, and paused. "And I can see,"
she continued, musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of
soliloquy, "why you have just failed to capture her imagination. For you
have failed--but you can hardly be aware how completely."

"Whether or not I'm aware," I snapped, "seems negligible! Susan feels
she must leave me, and she'll probably act with her usual promptness. Is
that what she called to tell you?"

"Partly," acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her soliloquy: "You've
given her--as you would--a ridiculous education. She seems to have
instincts, impulses, which--all things considered--might have bloomed if
cultivated. As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the
culture you've crammed upon her, you've left her so. She's
emancipated--that is, public; she's thrown away the locks and keys of
her mind. I grant she has one. But apparently no one has even suggested
to he