to give her reasons. Stafford was no
match for her when it came to sociology and he could only grunt
disapproval as she went on warmly to defend womankind from the
ignominy of a degrading marriage, while Hadley, keenly interested,
smoked his cigar and listened.

"A woman who will suffer in silence while her brutal husband stands
over her with a whip is a disgrace to her sex," she exclaimed hotly.
"She is no better than a shackled slave; her position in the man's
house is that of a concubine."

"What shall she do?" cried Stafford with a shrug of his shoulders and
a cynical laugh.

"Get a divorce," retorted Virginia.

"Divorce!" echoed the railroad man mockingly. "The world is full of
divorcees. Everyone looks down on them. They have a bad name. What
does she gain by that?"

"Her own self-respect if not that of the world. Divorce is the only
weapon a defenceless woman has."

Stafford, badly beaten, relapsed into a sulky silence, while Hadley
nodded approval.

"You are quite right, Mrs. Stafford," he said; "the fear of divorce
and its attendant publicity makes many a husband behave himself."

Following up her advantage, Virginia picked up a newspaper lying on a
table close by.

"Here," she said, "is the opinion of a woman on this very question--a
woman evidently who has herself suffered. She says:

"'How many beings live together for long years strangers in mind and
body! How many are the slaves of marriage whose relations are hideous
with mutual hate! Why, in the name of a religious principle, should
one make eternal the hell whose torments are as varied as they are
overwhelming? Why should not reason and the right of the individual
correct the mistakes of chance, false calculations, and hopes
deceived? Why should a woman who does not find in her husband the
necessary moral support suffer the tortures of a long agony in which
she is defenceless, of a perpetual struggle in which she is miserably
conquered; and, on the other hand, why should the husband who does not
find in his wife the hoped-for companion or the desired slave, find
the road to happiness forever closed to him? Before divorce was
established, men and women who lived together in misunderstanding
suffered an agony worse than that of the condemned to death, for
nothing can be compared to the torture of being tied, body and soul,
in hatred or scorn, or even indifference.'"

Hadley nodded approvingly.

"I think she puts the case pretty well," he