Mrs. Earle received Selma by invitation at her lodgings the following day, and so quickly did their friendship ripen that at the end of two hours each had told the other everything.  Selma was prone instinctively to regard as aristocratic and un-American any limitations to confidence.  The evident disposition on the part of Mrs. Earle to expose promptly and without reserve the facts of her past and her plans for the future seemed to Selma typical of an interesting character, and she was thankful to make a clean breast in her turn as far as was possible.  Mrs. Earle’s domestic experience had been thorny.

“I had a home once, too,” she said, “a happy home, I thought.  My husband said he loved me.  But almost from the first we had trouble.  It went on so from month to month, and finally we agreed to part.  He objected, my dear, to my living my own life.  He didn’t like me to take an interest in things outside the house—­public matters.  I was elected on the school-board—­the only woman—­and he ought to have been proud.  He said he was, at first, but he was too fond of declaring that a woman’s place is in her kitchen.  One day I said to him, ’Ellery, this can’t go on.  If we can’t agree we’d better separate.  A cat-and-dog life is no life at all.’  He answered back, ’I’m not asking you to leave me, but if you’re set on it don’t let me hinder you, Margaret.  You don’t need a man to support you.  You’re as good as a man yourself.’  He meant that to be sarcastic, I suppose.  ‘Yes,’ said I, ’thank God, I think I can take care of myself, even though I am a woman.’  That was the end of it.  There was no use for either of us to get excited.  I packed my things, and a few mornings later I said to him, ’Good-by, Ellery Earle:  I wish you well, and I suppose you’re my husband still, but I’m going to live my own life without let or hindrance from any man.  There’s your ring.’  My holding out the ring was startling to him, for he said, ’Aren’t you going to be sorry for this, Margaret?’ ‘No,’ said I, ’I’ve thought it all out, and it’s best for both of us.  There’s your ring.’  He wouldn’t take it, so I dropped it on the table and went out.  Some people miss it, and misbelieve I was ever married.  That was close on to twenty years ago, and I’ve never seen him since.  When the war broke out I heard he enlisted, but what’s become of him I don’t know.  Maybe he got a divorce.  I’ve kept right on and lived my own life in my own way, and never lacked food or raiment.  I’m forty-five years old, but I feel a young woman still.”

Notwithstanding Mrs. Earle’s business-like directness and the protuberance of her bust in conclusion, by way of reasserting her satisfaction with the results of her action, there was a touch of plaintiveness in her confession which suggested the womanly author of “Hints on Culture and Hygiene,” rather than the man-hater.  This was lost on Selma, who was fain to sympathize purely from the stand-point of righteousness.