red. "By tact I suppose
you mean I could have sold things behind his back--and all that." She
laughed. "He hasn't got any back. He had it so arranged that those
cold, wicked eyes of his were always watching me. His second wife
tried 'tact.' He caught her and drove her into the streets. I'd have
had no chance to get a cent, and if I had gotten it I'd not have dared
spend it. Do you imagine I ran away from him without having THOUGHT?
If there'd been any way of staying on, any way of making things even
endurable, I'd have stayed."

"But you've got to go back, Milly," cried her mother, in tears.

"You mean that you can't support me?"

"And your brother Frank--" Mrs. Presbury's eyes flashed and her rather
stout cheeks quivered. "I never thought I'd tell anybody, but I'll
tell you. I never liked your brother Frank, and he never liked me.
That sounds dreadful, doesn't it?"

"No, mother dear," said Mildred gently. "I've learned that life isn't
at all as--as everybody pretends."

"Indeed it isn't," said her mother. "Mothers always have favorites
among their children, and very often a mother dislikes one of her
children. Of course she hides her feeling and does her duty. But all
the same she can't help the feeling that is down in her heart. I had a
presentiment before he was born that I wouldn't like him, and sure
enough, I didn't. And he didn't like me, or his father, or any of us."

"It would never occur to me to turn to him," said Mildred.

"Then you see that you've got to go back to the general. You can't get
a divorce and alimony, for it was you that left him--and for no cause.
He was within his rights."

Mildred hesitated, confessed: "I had thought of going back to him and
acting in such a way that he'd be glad to give me a divorce and an
allowance."

"Yes, you might do that," said her mother. "A great many women do.
And, after all, haven't they a right to? A lady has got to have proper
support, and is it just to ask her to live with a man she loathes?"

"I haven't thought of the right or wrong of it," said Mildred. "It
looks to me as though right and wrong have very little to do with life
as it's lived. They're for hypocrites--and fools."

"Mildred!" exclaimed her mother, deeply shocked.

Mildred was not a little shocked at her own thoughts as she inspected
them in the full light into which speech had dragged them. "Anyhow,"
she went on, "I soon saw that such a plan was hopeless. He's n