. Still, if the half of it was so, I was more than justified
in cutting loose from him. No one could possibly blame me."

"No one does, so far as I can see," was the malicious answer. "I hear
of no complaints from others, and certainly I have uttered none. You
make a very satisfactory Lady Hurdly, and I suppose you get enough
out of the position to repay you for anything you may have lost--at
least, from the world's point of view, you should have done so."

Bettina did not answer at once. A sickness of soul was creeping over
her that made all life look suddenly loathsome. The one feeble ray
that penetrated the darkness in which she felt herself enveloped was
the help that came from a certain ideal which she had recently
enthroned in her own heart. As the world's need, the wider issues
affecting the myriad lives beyond her own, had recently been brought
before her consciousness, she had felt her way, as simply and weakly
as a child might have done, to one plain principle of life--that it
was worth while to try to be good. Never had she felt so keenly as in
this minute the utter futility of hoping to be happy. Yet in this
minute she felt more than ever, also, that happiness was not all.

It was only rarely that she had any personal talk with her husband.
The wall of separation between them seemed to be thickening by silent
accretion all the time. It was very difficult to scale this wall, and
she felt that any effort to do so irked him no less than it did her.
So, with an instinct not to let go the present opportunity, she said,
rather eagerly, as he was rising to go away:

"Sit down a moment. We do not often speak together. I have something
on my mind to say to you."

He resumed his seat and lighted a cigar--an action which discouraged
her by its nonchalance. Still, she was determined to go on. By a
great effort she made her voice very gentle, as she said:

"I know I have disappointed you in what you had hoped from this
marriage between us, and I want to tell you I am very sorry. If I
have not been able to give you the feeling which you desired--"

He interrupted her.

"Feeling?" he said. "Who wants feeling nowadays in a wife? No one
expects it. I wanted some one to make a handsome figure as Lady
Hurdly. I expected that you would do that, and you have not
disappointed me."

"If this is true, I'm glad to know it," she said; "but, at any rate,
you could not blame me for not giving you the love another woman
might