could lose or profit by the change. The "perfect" understanding would
come under other conditions than these.

She would have gone superstitiously to the window to gaze in the
direction of the vanished ship, but another instinct restrained her.
She would put aside all yearning for him until she had done something to
help him, and earned the confidence he seemed to have withheld. Perhaps
it was pride--perhaps she never really believed his exodus was distant
or complete.

With a full knowledge that to-morrow the various ornaments and pretty
trifles around her would be in the hands of the law, she gathered only a
few necessaries for her flight and some familiar personal trinkets. I
am constrained to say that this self-abnegation was more fastidious than
moral. She had no more idea of the ethics of bankruptcy than any other
charming woman; she simply did not like to take with her any contagious
memory of the chapter of the life just closing. She glanced around the
home she was leaving without a lingering regret; there was no sentiment
of tradition or custom that might be destroyed; her roots lay too near
the surface to suffer from dislocation; the happiness of her childless
union had depended upon no domestic centre, nor was its flame sacred to
any local hearthstone. It was without a sigh that, when night had fully
fallen, she slipped unnoticed down the staircase. At the door of the
drawing-room she paused and then entered with the first guilty feeling
of shame she had known that evening. Looking stealthily around she
mounted a chair before her husband's picture, kissed the irreproachable
moustache hurriedly, said, "You foolish darling, you!" and slipped
out again. With this touching indorsement of the views of a rival
philosopher, she closed the door softly and left her home forever.