that.
Love? You have no conception of the meaning of the word. Oh no, I shall
never live with you again."

Babcock clinched his palms in his distress and walked up and down. She
stood pale and determined looking into space. Presently he turned to her
and asked with quiet but intense solicitude, "You don't mean that you're
going to leave me for one fault, we being husband and wife and the
little girl in her grave? I said you don't understand and you don't. A
man's a man, and there are times when he's been drinking when he's
liable to yield to temptation, and that though he's so fond of his wife
that life without her would be misery. This sounds strange to a woman,
and it's a poor excuse. But it ought to count, Selma, when it comes to a
question of our separating. There would be happy years before us yet if
you give me another chance."

"Not happy years for me," she replied concisely. "The American woman
does not choose to live with the sort of man you describe. She demands
from her husband what he demands from her, faithfulness to the marriage
tie. We could never be happy again. Our ideal of life is different. I
have made excuses for you in other things, but my soul revolts at this."

Babcock looked at her for a moment in silence, then he said, a little
sternly, "You shouldn't have gone away and left me. I'm not blaming you,
but you shouldn't have gone." He walked to the window but he saw
nothing. His heart was racked. He had been eager to humiliate himself
before her to prove his deep contrition, but he had come to the end of
his resources, and yet she was adamant. Her charge that she had been
making excuses for him hitherto reminded him that they had not been
really sympathetic for some time past. With his back turned to her he
heard her answer:

"It was understood before I agreed to marry you that I was to be free to
follow my tastes and interests. It is a paltry excuse that, because I
left you alone for a week in pursuit of them, I am accessory to your
sin."

Babcock faced her sadly. "The sin's all mine," he said. "I can't deny
that. But, Selma, I guess I've been pretty lonely ever since the baby
died."

"Lonely?" she echoed. "Then my leaving you will not matter so much.
Here," she said, slipping off her wedding-ring, "this belongs to you."
She remembered Mrs. Earle's proceeding, and though she had not yet
decided what course to pursue in order to maintain her liberty, she
regarded this as the significant and