ain't the thing to be discussed, seeing as I've got you.'

"'You might get rid of me,' says he.

"'You mean you might get rid of me,' she answers.

"'It comes to the same thing,' he says.

"'No, it don't,' she replies, 'nor anything like it. I shouldn't have
got rid of you for my pleasure, and I'm not going to do it for yours. You
can live like a decent man, and I'll go on putting up with you; or you
can live like a fool, and I shan't stand in your way. But you can't do
both, and I'm not going to help you try.'

"Well, he argued with her, and he tried the coaxing dodge, and he tried
the bullying dodge, but it didn't work, neither of it.

"'I've done my duty by you,' says she, 'so far as I've been able, and
that I'll go on doing or not, just as you please; but I don't do more.'

"'We can't go on living like this,' says he, 'and it isn't fair to ask me
to. You're hammering my prospects.'

"'I don't want to do that,' says she. 'You take your proper position in
society, whatever that may be, and I'll take mine. I'll be glad enough
to get back to it, you may rest assured.'

"'What do you mean?' says he.

"'It's simple enough,' she answers. 'I was earning my living before I
married you, and I can earn it again. You go your way, I go mine.'

"It didn't satisfy him; but there was nothing else to be done, and there
was no moving her now in any other direction whatever, even had he wanted
to. He offered her anything in the way of money--he wasn't a mean
chap,--but she wouldn't touch a penny. She had kept her old clothes--I'm
not sure that some idea of needing them hadn't always been in her
head,--applied for a place under her former manager, who was then bossing
a hotel in Kensington, and got it. And there was an end of high life so
far as she was concerned.

"As for him, he went the usual way. It always seems to me as if men and
women were just like water; sooner or later they get back to the level
from which they started--that is, of course, generally speaking. Here
and there a drop clings where it climbs; but, taking them on the whole,
pumping-up is a slow business. Lord! I have seen them, many of them,
jolly clever they've thought themselves, with their diamond rings and big
cigars. 'Wait a bit,' I've always said to myself, 'there'll come a day
when you'll walk in and be glad enough of your chop and potatoes again
with your half-pint of bitter.' And nine cases out of ten I've been
right. James W