“Divorce is—­monstrous,” she said soberly to her husband in one of their hours of perfect confidence.

“How can we say it, of all persons, my darling?  Don’t be hidebound!”

“No,” she smiled reluctantly, “I suppose we can’t.  But—­but I never feel like a divorced woman, Warren, I feel like a different woman, but not as if that term fitted me.  It sounds so—­coarse.  Don’t you think it does?”

“No, I never thought of it quite that way.  Everyone makes mistakes,” he answered cheerfully.

“Don’t you care—­that it’s true of me?” she asked.

“Are you trying to make me jealous, you gypsy!” he laughed.  But there was no answering laughter in her face.

“Yes, perhaps I am,” she admitted, as if she were a little surprised that it was so.  And in her next slowly worded sentence she discovered for herself another truth.  “I mind it, Warren!” she said.  “I wish, with all my heart, that it wasn’t so!”

“That isn’t very consistent, sweet.  Your life made you what you were, the one woman in the world I could ever have loved.  Why quarrel with the process?”

“I wish you cared!” she said wistfully.

“Cared?”

“Yes—­suffered over it—­objected.  Then I could keep proving to you that I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until now!”

“But I believe that, my darling!”

She smiled at his wide, innocent look, a mother’s amused yet hopeless smile, and as they rose from their late luncheon he put his arm about her and tipped her beautiful face up toward his own.

“Don’t you realize, my darling, that just as you are, you are perfect to me—­not nearly perfect, or ninety-nine per cent. perfect, but pressed down and running over, a thousand per cent., a million per cent.?” he asked.

Her dark beauty glowed; she was more lovely than ever in her exquisite content.

“Oh, Warren, if you’d only say that to me over and over!” she begged.

“Dear Heaven, hear the woman!  What else do I do?”

“Oh, I don’t mean now.  I mean always, all through our lives.  It’s all I want to hear!”

“Do you realize that you are an absolute—­little—­tyrant?” he asked, laughing.  Radiantly she laughed back.

“I only realize one thing in these days,” she answered; “I only live for one thing!”

It was true.  The world for her now was all in her husband, his smile was her light, and she lived almost perpetually in the sunshine.  When they were parted—­and they were never long parted—­ the memory of this glance or that tone, this eager phrase or that sudden laugh, was enough to keep her happy.  When they met again, whether she came to meet him in his own hallway, or rose, lovely in her furs, and walked toward him in some restaurant or hotel, joy lent her a new and almost fearful beauty.  To dress for him, to make him laugh, to hold his interest, this was all that interested her, and for the world outside of their own house she cared not at all.  They had their own vocabulary, their own phrases for moments of mirth or tenderness; among her gowns he had his favorites. among the many expressions of his sensitive face there were some that it was her whimsical pleasure always to commend.  Their conversation, as is the way with lovers, was all of themselves, and all of praise.