u see? I want to be your
friend--really your friend in all this. I ... I understand how it has
happened. Yes ... better than you do perhaps. We ... we have drifted
apart. Oh, don't think I'm reproaching you----" she interrupted herself
proudly. "If you'll look back ... to ... to ... that time ... in
Virginia. When...."

She couldn't go on for a moment.

"When that glamour was on us both," she continued. "You'll remember that
I told you.... I warned you ... that it _was_ glamour ... that some day
... some day...."

No. She could not go on. Love--when it has been real, if only for an
hour--is always sacred. She sat very white, her chin in her hand, her
eyes downcast.

There was all about her the atmosphere of that wild, windy night when,
as she sat alone in the old house, he had rushed in to her like the very
Magic of Youth....

Still looking down, she said presently:

"Won't you even let me be your true friend, Morris?"

Very huskily he said:

"Well.... I ought to be grateful for that much...."

It was all horribly sad. She felt faint with the wasteful, useless
sadness of it all.

"What did you think of ... of proposing?" he asked, still in that husky,
beaten voice.

Sophy's own voice trembled a little when she spoke.

"I think this, Morris," she said. "I think your life ought to be free
... to offer to Belinda."

"'Free'? ... to offer ... '_free_'?" he gasped.

"I am willing to set you free...." she said.

There was silence. It lasted so long that she lifted her eyes to his
face. The look on it appalled her ... a sort of blasted look, as though
rage had struck like lightning.

"Are you ... are _you_...." he tried to get out his question. Choked on
it. He tore it out finally. "Are _you_ suggesting _divorce_ to me?"

"It is the only straight, honest way out of this ... this tangle,
Morris."

"You ... _you_ ... suggest divorce? Like that? Coolly ... _damned_
coolly ... as you might suggest a drive ... a walk...? Divorce?...
_You?_"

He jumped up, his face all distorted. He seized the chair in which he
had been sitting and dashed it with all his might against the wall. It
fell in splinters.

"Hell!" he almost sobbed at her. "Do you too take me for a fool?... 'A
common or garden fool'?... Do you, I say?... Now, then! Out with it! I'm
a soft fool you think. Hey?-- The sort of little, tame husband-fool that
never feels his budding antlers, till he sheds 'em in the divorce court?
Hey? That's what ..