orce will be a restricted one." Thorne was forcing his adversary's
hand.

"Why will it be restricted?" she demanded, her color and her temper
rising. "It shall _not_ be restricted, or hampered in any way, I tell
you, Nesbit Thorne! Am I to be fettered, and bound, and trammeled by
you forever? I will _not_ be. The divorce shall give me unlimited
power to do what I please with my life. It shall make me as free as
air--as free as I was before I married you."

"You would not wish to marry again?" he repeated.

"Why not?" rising to her feet and confronting him in angry excitement.

"Because, in that case, you would lose your child. I neither could nor
would permit my son to be brought up in the house of a man who stood to
him in the relationship you propose."

"You cannot take him from me," Mrs. Thorne retorted in defiant
contradiction; her ideas of the power of men and lawyers hopelessly
vague and bewildered. "No court on earth would take so small a child
from his mother."

"Ah! you propose having the case come into court then? I misunderstood
you. I thought you wished the affair managed quietly, to avoid
publicity and comment. Of course, if the case comes into court, I
shall contest it, and try to obtain possession of the boy, even for the
time the law allows the mother, on the ground of being better able to
support and educate him."

"I do not want the case to come into court here, Nesbit, and you know
that I do not! Why do you delight in tormenting me?"

"Listen to me, Ethel. I've no wish to torment you. I simply wished to
show you that I would abide by my rights, and that I have some
power--all the power which money can give--on my side. Our marriage
has been a miserable mistake from the first; we rushed into it without
knowledge of each other's characters and dispositions, and, like most
couples who take matrimony like a five-barred gate, we've come horribly
to grief. I shall not stand in your way; if you wish to go, I shall
not hinder you. This is what I propose: I'll help you in the matter,
will take all the trouble, make the arrangements, bear all the expense.
It will be necessary for one of us to go to Illinois, and see these
lawyers, if the divorce is to be gotten there. It may be necessary to
undergo a short residence in the state in order to simulate
citizenship, and make the divorce legal. I'll find out about this, and
if it's necessary I will do it. After the divorce, I'll allow yo