She was awaiting him in the parlor.  Though he saw at a glance that she looked grave, he went forward to kiss her, but she rose and, stepping behind the table, put out her hand forbiddingly.

“What is the matter?” he faltered.

“That woman has been here,” was her slow, scornful response.

“Selma, I—­” A confusing sense of hopelessness as to what to say choked Babcock’s attempt to articulate.  There was a brief silence, while he looked at her imploringly and miserably.

“Is it true what she says?  Have you been false to your marriage vows?  Have you committed adultery?”

“My God!  Selma, you don’t understand.”

“It is an easy question to answer, yes or no?”

“I forgot myself, Selma.  I was drunk and crazy.  I ask your pardon.”

She shook her head coldly.  “I shall have nothing more to do with you.  I cannot live with you any longer.”

“Not live with me?”

“Would you live with me if it were I who had forgotten myself?”

“I think I would, Selma.  You don’t understand.  I was a brute.  I have been wretched ever since.  But it was a slip—­an accident.  I drank too much, and it happened.  I love you, Selma, with all my heart.  I have never been false to you in my affection.”

“It is a strange time to talk of affection.  I went away for a week, and in my absence you insulted me by debauchery with a creature like that.  Love?  You have no conception of the meaning of the word.  Oh no, I shall never live with you again.”

Babcock clinched his palms in his distress and walked up and down.  She stood pale and determined looking into space.  Presently he turned to her and asked with quiet but intense solicitude, “You don’t mean that you’re going to leave me for one fault, we being husband and wife and the little girl in her grave?  I said you don’t understand and you don’t.  A man’s a man, and there are times when he’s been drinking when he’s liable to yield to temptation, and that though he’s so fond of his wife that life without her would be misery.  This sounds strange to a woman, and it’s a poor excuse.  But it ought to count, Selma, when it comes to a question of our separating.  There would be happy years before us yet if you give me another chance.”

“Not happy years for me,” she replied concisely.  “The American woman does not choose to live with the sort of man you describe.  She demands from her husband what he demands from her, faithfulness to the marriage tie.  We could never be happy again.  Our ideal of life is different.  I have made excuses for you in other things, but my soul revolts at this.”

Babcock looked at her for a moment in silence, then he said, a little sternly, “You shouldn’t have gone away and left me.  I’m not blaming you, but you shouldn’t have gone.”  He walked to the window but he saw nothing.  His heart was racked.  He had been eager to humiliate himself before her to prove his deep contrition, but he had come to the end of his resources, and yet she was adamant.  Her charge that she had been making excuses for him hitherto reminded him that they had not been really sympathetic for some time past.  With his back turned to her he heard her answer: