l."

"Well, I can't think what you did it for--in such haste."

"I did it," said Ranny, in his maturity, his lucidity, "because it was
the way I was brought up. I suppose, come to that, I did it for all
you."

He saw everything now as it was.

"How d'you make that out? Did it for us!"

Then Ranny delivered his soul, and the escape, the outburst was
tremendous, cataclysmic.

"For you and your rotten respectability! What you brought me up on. What
you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now.
You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how
respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take
my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's
because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid
of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're
afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's
done--you know what she _is_--"

"She's a woman, Randall, she's a woman."

"She's a--Well, she _is_, and you know it. You know what she is, and you
want me to take her back so as you can lie about it and hush it all up
and pretend it isn't there. Same as you've done with my father. He's a
drunkard--"

"For shame, Randall," said his uncle.

"He is, and you know it, and he knows it, and my mother knows it. And
yet you go on lying about him and pretending. I'm sick of it. I'm sick
of hearing about how good he is, and his Headaches--Headaches!"

"Oh! Ranny, dear," his mother wailed, piteously.

"I'm not blaming him, Mother. Poor old Humming-bird, he can't help it.
It's the way he's made. I'm not blaming Virelet. She can't help it,
either. It's my fault. If I'd wanted her to stick to me I oughtn't to
have married her."

"What ought you to have done then?" his uncle inquired, sternly.

"Anything but that. That's what started her. She couldn't stand it.
She'll stick to Mercier all right, you'll see, because she isn't married
to the swine; whereas if I took her back to-night she'd chuck me
to-morrow. Can't you see that she's like that? She's done the best day's
work she ever did for herself and me, too."

"Well, how you can speak about it so, Ranny," said his mother.

"There you're at it again, you know--pretendin'. You go on as if it was
the most horrible thing that could happen to any one, her boltin', when
you know the most horrible thing would be her comin' back again. To look
at you and Uncle