I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you
over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any
possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get
married again."

"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
breath.

"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting
when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good
deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the
women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears
--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the
making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."

Her husband got up.

"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."

The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly