aven't--as a
generalization. I mean to marry as soon as I get the chance!"

"The chance----?"

"To meet the right man. I'm gambler enough to believe in my luck yet!"

Mrs. Amherst sighed compassionately. "There _is_ no right man! As
Blanche says, matrimony's as uncomfortable as a ready-made shoe. How can
one and the same institution fit every individual case? And why should
we all have to go lame because marriage was once invented to suit an
imaginary case?"

Justine gave a slight shrug. "You talk of walking lame--how else do we
all walk? It seems to me that life's the tight boot, and marriage the
crutch that may help one to hobble along!" She drew Bessy's hand into
hers with a caressing pressure. "When you philosophize I always know
you're tired. No one who feels well stops to generalize about symptoms.
If you won't let your doctor prescribe for you, your nurse is going to
carry out his orders. What you want is quiet. Be reasonable and send
away everybody before Mr. Amherst comes back!"

She dropped the last phrase carelessly, glancing away as she spoke; but
the stiffening of the fingers in her clasp sent a little tremor through
her hand.

"Thanks for your advice. It would be excellent but for one thing--my
husband is not coming back!"

The mockery in Bessy's voice seemed to pass into her features, hardening
and contracting them as frost shrivels a flower. Justine's face, on the
contrary, was suddenly illuminated by compassion, as though a light had
struck up into it from the cold glitter of her friend's unhappiness.

"Bessy! What do you mean by not coming back?"

"I mean he's had the tact to see that we shall be more comfortable
apart--without putting me to the unpleasant necessity of telling him
so."

Again the piteous echo of Blanche Carbury's phrases! The laboured
mimicry of her ideas!

Justine looked anxiously at her friend. It seemed horribly false not to
mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign
ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any
departure from the conventional.

"Please tell me what has happened," she said at length.

Bessy, with a smile, released her hand. "John has gone back to the life
he prefers--which I take to be a hint to me to do the same."

Justine hesitated again; then the pressure of truth overcame every
barrier of expediency. "Bessy--I ought to tell you that I saw Mr.
Amherst in town the day I went to Philadelphia. He spok