“Left him?”

“Yes.  I have obtained a divorce.  He was unfaithful to me.”

“I see”—­said Littleton with a sort of gasp—­“I see.  I did not know.  You never wrote to me.”

“I did not feel like writing to any body.  There was nothing to be done but that.”

Littleton regarded her with a perturbed, restless air.

“Then you live no longer at 25 Onslow Avenue?”

“Oh, no.  I left there more than six months ago.  I live in lodgings.  I am supporting myself by literary work.  I am Mrs. Selma White now, and my divorce has been absolute more than a month.”

She spoke gravely and quietly, with less than her usual assurance, for she felt the spell of his keen, eager scrutiny and was not averse to yield at the moment to the propensity of her sex.  She wondered what he was thinking about.  Did he blame her?  Did he sympathize with her?

“Where are you going when you leave here?” he asked.

“Home—­to my new home.  Will you walk along with me?”

“That is what I should like.  I am astonished by what you have told me, and am anxious to hear more about it, if to speak of it would not wound you.  Divorced!  How you must have suffered!  And I did not have the chance to offer you my help—­my sympathy.”

“Yes, I have suffered.  But that is all over now.  I am a free woman.  I am beginning my life over again.”

It was a beautiful afternoon, and by mutual consent, which neither put into words, they diverged from the exact route to Selma’s lodging house and turned their steps to the open country beyond the city limits—­the picturesque dell which has since become the site of Benham’s public park.  There they seated themselves where they would not be interrupted.  Selma told him on the way the few vital facts in her painful story, to which he listened in a tense silence, broken chiefly by an occasional ejaculation expressive of his contempt for the man who had brought such unhappiness upon her.  She let him understand, too, that her married life, from the first, had been far less happy than he had imagined—­wretched makeshift for the true relation of husband and wife.  She spoke of her future buoyantly, yet with a touch of sadness, as though to indicate that she was aware that the triumphs of intelligence and individuality could not entirely be a substitute for a happy home.

“And what do you expect to do?” he inquired in a bewildered fashion, as though her delineation of her hopes had been lost on him.

“Do?  Support myself by my own exertions, as I have told you.  By writing I expect.  I am doing very well already.  Do you question my ability to continue?”

“Oh, no; not that.  Only—­”

“Only what?  Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the chance to prove what is in them—­who would treat us like china dolls and circumscribe us by conventions?  I know you are not, because I have heard you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness.  Only what?”