The only safe thing for a woman to do who finds herself married to one man and in love with another is to wait, a year, or two or three years, until time proves her love and she knows in her heart that she can make the change and never regret it, no matter what happens. You see, she can NEVER be happy with the new love as long as CONSCIENCE OR HEART reproaches her for her treatment of the old love. It behooves her to consider well.

Time will prove the new love.  In many such cases times reveals the idol’s feet of clay.  He shows that his love is for himself, not for her.  He pouts and kicks and teases like a petulant child.  He wants her NOW, no matter how she may suffer in consequence of his haste.

In spite of herself, in spite of her love for the new love, she finds he is not panning out as she supposed.  She begins to see his other, his everyday side—­the side she will have to live with if she goes to him.

Now is the husband’s chance.  She knows his every-day side, from experience; she has tried it in weal and woe.  If he rises to this occasion the Ideal Man, he stands a fair chance of winning from his wife a deeper love than she has yet given any man.  He may catch her whole heart in its rebound from the idol with feet of clay.

To a husband in such a position I would say, Be kind. “There is nothing so kingly as kindness!”—­and true kindness under this most trying condition will in time win even a recalcitrant wife’s admiration and love—­IF the two are really mates.  If they are not real mates; if they have outgrown their usefulness to each other; the sooner they part the better.  To hold them together would only be another “mistake.”

Because a man and wife were mates five or ten years ago is no proof that they are mates today.  We are all growing, and it is often literally true that we “grow away” from people.

Every loved one who goes out of our lives makes room for a better, fuller love—­unless we shut ourselves in with our “grief."

It is said that Robert Louis Stevenson fell in love with the wife of his best friend.  He told his friend frankly, intending to leave the city.  His friend questioned the wife and found she reciprocated Stevenson’s love.  Stevenson stayed with his friend in Paris and the wife went to her father’s home in California.  A year later, the attachment between his wife and Stevenson still remaining, the friend applied for a divorce.  Then he and Stevenson journeyed all the way to California together, where Stevenson was married to the ex-wife.  The ex-husband attended the wedding, and that same evening announced his engagement to a girl friend of Mrs. Stevenson.

I glory in the friendship of those two men who refused to allow the unreasoning caprices of love to sever their love for each other.  A separation and remarriage like that is a credit to all parties concerned. It is the quarrels and estrangements which are the real disgrace in cases of separation and remarriage.