“In some states it is absolutely illegal,” Rachael continued, “in others, it’s permissible.  In some it is a real source of revenue.  Now fancy treating any other offence that way!  Imagine states in which stealing was only a regrettable incident, or where murder was tolerated!  In South Carolina you cannot get a divorce on any grounds!  In Washington the courts can give it to you for any cause they consider sufficient.  There was a case:  a man and his wife obtained a divorce and both remarried.  Now they find they are both bigamists, because it was shown that the wife went West, with her husband’s knowledge and consent, to establish her residence there for the explicit purpose of getting a divorce.  It was well-established law that if a husband or wife seek the jurisdiction of another state for the sole object of obtaining a divorce, without any real intent of living there, making their home there, goes, in other words, just for divorce purposes, then the decree having been fraudulently obtained will not be recognized anywhere!”

“But thousands do it, Rachael.”

“But thousands don’t seem to realize—­I never did before—­that that is illegal.  You can’t deliberately move to Reno or Seattle or San Francisco for such a purpose.  All marriages following a divorce procured under these conditions are illegal.  Besides this, the divorce laws as they exist in Washington, California, or Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts.  All sorts of hideous complications are going on:  blackmail and perjury!

“I wonder why divorce laws are so little understood?” Alice mused.

“Because divorce is an abnormal thing.  You can’t make it right, and of course we are a long way from making it wrong.  But that is what it is coming to, I believe.  Divorce will be against the law some day!  No divorce on any grounds!  It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law.  Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract.  Are any other contracts to be broken with public approval?  We will see the return of the old, simple law, then we will wonder at ourselves!  I am not a woman who takes naturally to public work—­I wish I were.  But perhaps some day I can strike the system a blow.  It is women like me who understand, and who will help to end it.”

“It is only the worth-while women who do understand,” said Alice.  “You are the marble worth cutting.  Life is a series of phases; we are none of us the same from year to year.  You are not the same girl that you were when you married Clarence Breckenridge—­”

“What a different woman!” Rachael said under her breath.

“Well,” said Alice then a little frightened, “why won’t you think that perhaps Warren might have changed, too; that whatever Warren has done, it was done more like—­like the little boy who has never had his fling, who gets dizzy with his own freedom, and does something foolish without analyzing just what he is doing?”