something which Mr. Lanley had never been able to understand.

And how obstinate Adelaide had been! She, who had been such a docile
girl, and then for many years so completely under the thumb of her
splendid-looking husband, had suddenly become utterly intractable. She
would listen to no reason and brook no delay. She had been willing enough
to explain; she had explained repeatedly, but the trouble was he could
not understand the explanation. She did not love her husband any more,
she said. Mr. Lanley pointed out to her that this was no legal grounds
for a divorce.

"Yes, but I look down upon him," she went on.

"On poor Joe?" her father had asked innocently, and had then discovered
that this was the wrong thing to say. She had burst out, "Poor Joe! poor
Joe!" That was the way every one considered him. Was it her fault if he
excited pity and contempt instead of love and respect? Her love, she
intimated, had been of a peculiarly eternal sort; Severance himself was
to blame for its extinction. Mr. Lanley discovered that in some way she
considered the intemperance of Severance's habits to be involved. But
this was absurd. It was true that for a year or two Severance had taken
to drinking rather more than was wise; but, Mr. Lanley had thought at the
time, the poor young man had not needed any artificial stimulant in the
days when Adelaide had fully and constantly admired him. He had seen
Severance come home several times not exactly drunk, but rather more
boyishly boastful and hilarious than usual. Even Mr. Lanley, a naturally
temperate man, had not found Joe repellent in the circumstances.
Afterward he had been thankful for this weakness: it gave him the only
foundation on which he could build a case not for the courts, of course,
but for the world. Unfortunately, however, Severance had pulled up before