pping herself in her
dignity. Women would be with her. She called on the noblest of them to
justify the course she chose, and they did, in an almost audible murmur.

And O the rich reward. A black archway-gate swung open to the glittering
fields of freedom.

Emma was not of the chorus. Emma meditated as an invalid. How often had
Emma bewailed to her that the most, grievous burden of her malady was
her fatal tendency to brood sickly upon human complications! She could
not see the blessedness of the prospect of freedom to a woman abominably
yoked. What if a miserable woman were dragged through mire to reach it!
Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do. That man--but
pass him!

And that other--the dear, the kind, careless, high-hearted old friend.
He could honestly protest his guiltlessness, and would smilingly leave
the case to go its ways. Of this she was sure, that her decision and
her pleasure would be his. They were tied to the stake. She had already
tasted some of the mortal agony. Did it matter whether the flames
consumed her?

Reflecting on the interview with Redworth, though she had performed her
part in it placidly, her skin burned. It was the beginning of tortures
if she stayed in England.

By staying to defend herself she forfeited her attitude of dignity and
lost all chance of her reward. And name the sort of world it is, dear
friends, for which we are to sacrifice our one hope of freedom, that we
may preserve our fair fame in it!

Diana cried aloud, 'My freedom!' feeling as a butterfly flown out of
a box to stretches of sunny earth beneath spacious heavens. Her bitter
marriage, joyless in all its chapters, indefensible where the man was
right as well as where insensately wrong, had been imprisonment. She
excused him down to his last madness, if only the bonds were broken.
Here, too, in this very house of her happiness with her father, she had
bound herself to the man voluntarily, quite inexplicably. Voluntarily,
as we say. But there must be a spell upon us at times. Upon young women
there certainly is.

The wild brain of Diana, armed by her later enlightenment as to the laws
of life and nature, dashed in revolt at the laws of the world when she
thought of the forces, natural and social, urging young women to marry
and be bound to the end.

It should be a spotless world which is thus ruthless.

But were the world impeccable it would behave more generously.

The world is ruthless, d