oss the continent, filled with
discomforts that would have tried the constitution of a strong man.

Robert Louis arrived "bilgy," as he expressed it, but alive. Mrs.
Osbourne was better. The day she received the telegram was the
turning-point in her case.

The doctor perceived that his treatment was along the right line, and
ordered the medicine continued.

She was too ill to see Robert Louis--it was not necessary, anyway. He
was near and this was enough. She began to gain. Just here seems a good
place to say that the foolish story to the effect that Mr. Osbourne was
present at the wedding and gave his wife away has no foundation in fact.
Robert Louis never saw Mr. Osbourne and never once mentioned his name to
any one so far as we know. He was a mine-prospector and speculator,
fairly successful in his work. That he and his wife were totally
different in their tastes and ambitions is well understood. They whom
God has put asunder no man can join together.

The husband and wife had separated, and Mrs. Osbourne went to France to
educate her children--educate them as far from their father as possible.
Also, she wished to study art on her own account. So, blessed be
stupidity--and heart-hunger and haunting misery that drive one out and
away.

She returned to California to obtain legal freedom and make secure her
business affairs. There are usually three parties to a divorce, and this
case was no exception. It is a terrible ordeal for a woman to face a
divorce-court and ask the State to grant her a legal separation from the
father of her children. Divorce is not a sudden, spontaneous affair--it
is the culmination of a long train of unutterable woe. Under the storm
and stress of her troubles Mrs. Osbourne had been stricken with fever.
Sickness is a result, and so is health.

When Robert Louis arrived in San Francisco Mrs. Osbourne grew better. In
a few months she pushed her divorce case to a successful conclusion.

Mr. Osbourne must have been a man with some gentlemanly instincts, for
he made no defense, provided a liberal little fortune for his former
family, and kindly disappeared from view.

Robert Louis did desultory work on newspapers in San Francisco and later
at Monterey, with health up and down as hope fluctuated. In the interval
a cablegram had come from his father saying, "Your allowance is two
hundred and fifty pounds a year." This meant that he had been forgiven,
although not very graciously, and was not t