After a minute or two of silence, Cecily was beginning to speak on some indifferent subject, when her companion interrupted her.

“Will you let me tell you something about myself?”

“Whatever you wish, Mrs. Travis,” Cecily answered, with sympathy.

“I’ve left my husband.  Perhaps you thought of that?”

“No.”

The sudden disclosure gave her a shock.  She had the sensation of standing for the first time face to face with one of the sterner miseries of life.

“I did it once before,” pursued the other, “two years ago.  Then I was foolish enough to be wheedled back again.  That shan’t happen this time.”

“Have you really no choice but to do this?” Cecily asked, with much earnestness.

“Oh, I could have stayed if I had chosen.  He doesn’t beat me.  I have as much of my own way as I could expect.  Perhaps you’ll think me unreasonable.  A Turkish woman would.”

Cecily sat mute.  She could not but resent the harsh tone in which she was addressed, in spite of her pity.

“It’s only that I suffer in my self-respect—­a little,” Mrs. Travis continued.  “Of course, this is no reason for taking such a step, except to those who have suffered in the same way.  Perhaps you would like to stop the carriage and let me leave you?”

“Your suffering makes you unjust to me,” replied Cecily, much embarrassed by this strange impulsiveness.  “Indeed I sympathize with you.  I think it quite possible that you are behaving most rightly.”

“You don’t maintain, then, that it is a wife’s duty to bear every indignity from her husband?”

“Surely not.  On the contrary, I think there are some indignities which no wife ought to bear.”

“I’m glad to hear that.  I had a feeling that you would think in this way, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you.  Of course you have only the evidence of my word for believing me.”

“I can see that you are very unhappy, and the cause you name is quite sufficient.”

“In one respect, I am very lucky.  I have a little money of my own, and that enables me to go and live by myself.  Most women haven’t this resource:  many are compelled to live in degradation only for want of it.  I should like to see how many homes would be broken up, if all women were suddenly made independent in the same way that I am.  How I should enjoy that!  I hate the very word ’marriage’!”

Cecily averted her face, and said nothing.  After a pause, her companion continued in a calm voice: 

“You can’t sympathize with that, I know.  And you are comparing my position with your own.”

No answer was possible, for Mrs. Travis had spoken the truth.

“In the first year of my marriage, I used to do the same whenever I heard of any woman who was miserable with her husband.”

“Is there no possibility of winning back your husband?” Cecily asked, in a veiled voice.