hat the door of divorce stood open, no marriage need
be an imprisonment, and the contract therefore no longer involved any
diminution of self-respect. The nature of their attachment placed
them so far beyond the reach of such contingencies that it was easy to
discuss them with an open mind; and Julia's sense of security made her
dwell with a tender insistence on Westall's promise to claim his release
when he should cease to love her. The exchange of these vows seemed
to make them, in a sense, champions of the new law, pioneers in the
forbidden realm of individual freedom: they felt that they had somehow
achieved beatitude without martyrdom.

This, as Julia now reviewed the past, she perceived to have been her
theoretical attitude toward marriage. It was unconsciously, insidiously,
that her ten years of happiness with Westall had developed another
conception of the tie; a reversion, rather, to the old instinct of
passionate dependency and possessorship that now made her blood revolt
at the mere hint of change. Change? Renewal? Was that what they
had called it, in their foolish jargon? Destruction, extermination
rather--this rending of a myriad fibres interwoven with another's being!
Another? But he was not other! He and she were one, one in the mystic
sense which alone gave marriage its significance. The new law was not
for them, but for the disunited creatures forced into a mockery of
union. The gospel she had felt called on to proclaim had no bearing on
her own case.... She sent for the doctor and told him she was sure she
needed a nerve tonic.

She took the nerve tonic diligently, but it failed to act as a sedative
to her fears. She did not know what she feared; but that made her
anxiety the more pervasive. Her husband had not reverted to the subject
of his Saturday talks. He was unusually kind and considerate, with a
softening of his quick manner, a touch of shyness in his consideration,
that sickened her with new fears. She told herself that it was because
she looked badly--because he knew about the doctor and the nerve
tonic--that he showed this deference to her wishes, this eagerness to
screen her from moral draughts; but the explanation simply cleared the
way for fresh inferences.

The week passed slowly, vacantly, like a prolonged Sunday. On Saturday
the morning post brought a note from Mrs. Van Sideren. Would dear Julia
ask Mr. Westall to come half an hour earlier than usual, as there was to
be some music af