“No—­wait a moment,” she said.  “It’s very simple, after all, what I have to tell you.  I don’t love my husband, and he doesn’t love me, and it has become torture to live together.  I have left him with his knowledge and consent, and he understands that I will get a divorce.”

Mr. Wentworth appeared to be pondering—­perhaps not wholly on the legal aspects of the case thus naively presented.  Whatever may have been his private comments, they were hidden.  He pronounced tentatively, and a little absently, the word “desertion.”

“If the case could possibly be construed as desertion on your husband’s part, you could probably get a divorce in three years in Massachusetts.”

“Three years!” cried Honora, appalled.  “I could never wait three years!”

She did not remark the young lawyer’s smile, which revealed a greater knowledge of the world than one would have suspected.  He said nothing, however.

“Three years!” she repeated.  “Why, it can’t be, Mr. Wentworth.  There are the Waterfords—­she was Mrs. Boutwell, you remember.  And—­and Mrs. Rindge—­it was scarcely a year before—­”

He had the grace to nod gravely, and to pretend not to notice the confusion in which she halted.  Lawyers, even young ones with white teeth and clear eyes, are apt to be a little cynical.  He had doubtless seen from the beginning that there was a man in the background.  It was not his business to comment or to preach.

“Some of the western states grant divorces on—­on much easier terms,” he said politely.  “If you care to wait, I will go into our library and look up the laws of those states.”

“I wish you would,” answered Honora.  “I don’t think I could bear to spend three years in such—­in such an anomalous condition.  And at any rate I should much rather go West, out of sight, and have it all as quickly over with as possible.”

He bowed, and departed on his quest.  And Honora waited, at moments growing hot at the recollection of her conversation with him.  Why—­she asked herself should the law make it so difficult, and subject her to such humiliation in a course which she felt to be right and natural and noble?  Finally, her thoughts becoming too painful, she got up and looked out of the window.  And far below her, through the mist, she beheld the burying-ground of Boston’s illustrious dead which her cabman had pointed out to her as he passed.  She did not hear the door open as Mr. Wentworth returned, and she started at the sound of his voice.

“I take it for granted that you are really serious in this matter, Mrs. Spence,” he said.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

“And that you have thoroughly reflected,” he continued imperturbably.  Evidently, in spite of the cold impartiality of the law, a New England conscience had assailed him in the library.  “I cannot take er—­the responsibility of advising you as to a course of action.  You have asked me the laws of certain western states as to divorce I will read them.”