she said. She folded her arms in her mantle. "What
explanations do you wish?" she asked, coldly.

"Why are you going back to Lansing Harold, when you are not in the least
forced to go?"

"I am forced; my marriage forces me."

"Not after the ill treatment you have received from him."

"He has never illtreated me personally; in many ways he has never been
unkind, many men called good husbands are much more so. He does not
drink. If he drank, that would be an excuse for me--an excuse to leave
him; but he does not, I have never had a fear of that sort, he has never
struck me or threatened me in his life. And I have no children to think
of--whether his influence over them would be bad. That too would have
been an excuse, a valid one; but it is not mine. He leaves me my
personal liberty as he left it to me before. In addition, he is now
hopelessly crippled--he has sent me his physician's letter to prove it;
his case is there pronounced a life-long one, he will never walk, or be
any better than he is now. Are these explanations sufficient? or do you
require more?"

"No explanations can ever be sufficient," Winthrop answered. He stood
looking at her. "Oh, Margaret, it is such a fearful sacrifice!" He had
abandoned for the moment both his anger and his efforts at argument.

"Yes; but that is what life is, isn't it?" she said, her voice trembling
a little in spite of herself.

"No, it's not. And it shouldn't be. Why should an utterly selfish man of
that kind, who has forfeited every claim upon you a hundred times
over--why should he be allowed to dictate to you, to wither your whole
existence? Yes, I am beginning again, I know it; but I cannot help it!
It is true that I have always talked against separations--preached
against them. But that was before my own feelings were brought in, and
it makes a wonderful difference? When a woman you care for is made
utterly wretched, you take a different view, and you want to seize your
old preaching-self, and knock him against the wall! It is _not_ right
that you should go back to Lanse, it is wicked, as murder is wicked. He
does not strike you--that may be; but the life will kill you just as
surely as though he should give you every day, with his own hand, a
dose of slow poison. You have an excessively sensitive disposition--you
pretend you have not, but you have; you would not be able to throw it
off--the yoke he would put upon you, you would not be able to rise above
it, become in