“No.  I have been a child.  I am one no longer.  Don’t ask me to go back.  I am a living, feeling, understanding woman!  George himself allows it is perfectly shocking to be treated as I am,—­a mere toy! a plaything!”

George again!  I could scarcely restrain my impatience.  Yet how to make her understand?

“Don’t you see, Lulu, that George ought never to have dared to name the subject of your and your husband’s differences? and do you not see that you can never discuss the subject with anybody with propriety?  If, unhappily, all is not as you, as we, wish it, let us hope for the effect of time and right feeling in both; but don’t, don’t allow any gentleman to talk to you of your husband’s treatment of you!”

Lulu listened in quiet wonderment, while, with agitated voice and trembling mouth, I addressed her as I had never before done.  I had constantly avoided speaking to her on the subject.  She looked at me now with clear, innocent eyes, (I am so glad to remember them!) and placed her two hands affectionately on my shoulders.

“I know what you mean,—­and what you fear.  That I shall say something, or do something undignified, or possibly wrong.  But that, with God’s help, I shall never do.  Such happiness as I can procure, aside from my husband, and which I had a right to expect through him,—­such enjoyment as comes from intellectual improvement and the exercise of my faculties, this is surely innocent pleasure, this I shall have.  And George,—­you must not blame him for being indignant, when he sees me treated so unworthily,—­or for calling Lewis a Pacha, as he always does.  You must think, my dear, that it isn’t pleasant to be treated only like a Circassian slave, and that one may have something better to do in life than to twirl jewelled armlets, or to light my lord’s chibouk!”

She looked all radiant with scorn, as she said this,—­her eyes flashing, and her very forehead crimson.  I could see she was remembering long months and years in that moment of indignant anger.  Seeing them with her eyes, I could not say she was unjust, or that her estrangement was unnatural.

“Now, then, good friend, good bye!  Don’t look anxious.  Don’t fear for me.  I am not happy, but I shall know how to keep myself from misery.  You and your excellent husband have done more for me than you know or think; and I shall try to keep right.”

She left me with this, and we parted from both with a lingering sweet friendliness that dwells still in our memories.

“It would be horrible to be on these terms, if she loved him,” said the minister, that night, after I had told him of our parting interview.

“Well, she don’t, you see.  Did she ever?”

“With such mind and heart as she had, I suppose.  On the other hand, what did he marry?”

“Grace and beauty—­and promise.  Of course, like every man in love, he took everything good for granted.”