y sent off our acceptance to Mrs. Malise, I didn't
spare him one bit. I told him that for once in his life he was to part
company with his fossil world, and find himself in the vanguard of
civilization, breathing another atmosphere in the high fellowship of
the evangels of religious and social liberty. I besought him not to
mortify me by any expression of his limited ideas and convictions upon
the topics we should probably hear discussed, and above all not to
betray horror at any enunciation that seemed to his feeble apprehension
to strike at the root of all possible or endurable tarrying on this
planet. "Don't let it be known," I entreated, "what a clog you are upon
my soarings after the illimitable. I _am_ a victim, but the anguish and
humiliation of my lot are too recent and painful for publicity--as yet!

"Let them think you idiotic, dear--that goes without saying because
you're a man--but not that you're a tyrant to whom a poor-spirited wife
must succumb.

"And you'll see Americans, dear, who've come over to find out why these
effete regions and peoples still linger on the earth, and to them
you'll only be a 'blarsted Britisher,' and you're not to resent it if
they treat you accordin'. And there'll be Internationalists, to whom
you're a 'bloated aristocrat,' and they won't have, to say nice
manners. Then if you don't take Mrs. Malise down, you'll may be squire
some grand new light. I can't tell you how to behave, for I don't know
if the men of the future are to be deferential, or free and easy; but
you must take a hint from the behavior of the other men. She'll wear a
garnet-silk gown trimmed with white Yak lace, a pea-green ostrich
feather, and ribbons in her hair, and a profusion of jingling Berlin
steel ornaments, and she'll either trample you under foot and heap you
over with wisdom, or she'll find you're her affinity. And if that
happens, never mind me, love. If you _wish_ to go after affinities, go!
_I_ shall always be the same--the meek, forgiving woman who knows that
a wife's duty is to smile always--to upbraid never. Leave me and your
poor angel child if you will! We both believed in indissoluble marriage
once, but that needn't hinder you. Renounce----"

And about here, I think it was, my eloquence and pathos were suddenly
checked in their flow. Men, husbands especially, take such mean
advantages! And reasoning, and calm, intellectual conversation have,
somehow, so little charm for them! I tell you painf