“It was not your fault, Phil.”

“No, not the divorce part.  Do you suppose I wouldn’t have taken any kind of medicine before resorting to that!  But what’s the use; for you can try as you may to keep your name clean, and then you can fold your arms and wait to see what a hopeless fool fate makes of you.”

“But no disgrace touches you, dear,” she said tremulously.

“I’ve been all over that, too,” he said with quiet bitterness.  “You are partly right; nobody cares in this town.  Even though I did not defend the suit, nobody cares.  And there’s no disgrace, I suppose, if nobody cares enough even to condone.  Divorce is no longer noticed; it is a matter of ordinary occurrence—­a matter of routine in some sets.  Who cares?—­except decent folk?  And they only think it’s a pity—­and wouldn’t do it themselves.  The horrified clamour comes from outside the social registers and blue books; we know they’re right, but it doesn’t affect us.  What does affect us is that we were the decent folk who permitted ourselves the luxury of being sorry for others who resorted to divorce as a remedy but wouldn’t do it ourselves! . . .  Now we’ve done it and—­”

“Phil!  I will not have you feel that way.”

“What way?”

“The way you feel.  We are older than we were—­everybody is older—­the world is, too.  What we were brought up to consider impossible—­”

“What we were brought up to consider impossible was what kept me up to the mark out there, Nina.”  He made a gesture toward the East.  “Now, I come back here and learn that we’ve all outgrown those ideas—­”

“Phil!  I never meant that.”

He said:  “If Alixe found that she cared for Ruthven, I don’t blame her.  Laws and statutes can’t govern such matters.  If she found she no longer cared for me, I could not blame her.  But two people, mismated, have only one chance in this world—­to live their tragedy through with dignity.  That is absolutely all life holds for them.  Beyond that, outside of that dead line—­treachery to self and race and civilisation!  That is my conclusion after a year’s experience in hell.”  He rose and began to pace the floor, fingers worrying his moustache.  “Law?  Can a law, which I do not accept, let me loose to risk it all again with another woman?”

She said slowly, her hands folded in her lap:  “It is well you’ve come to me at last.  You’ve been turning round and round in that wheeled cage until you think you’ve made enormous progress; and you haven’t.  Dear, listen to me; what you honestly believe to be unselfish and high-minded adherence to principle, is nothing but the circling reasoning of a hurt mind—­an intelligence still numbed from shock, a mental and physical life forced by sheer courage into mechanical routine. . . .  Wait a moment; there is nobody else to say this to you; and if I did not love you I would not interfere with this great mistake you are so honestly making of your life, and which, perhaps, is the only comfort left you.  I say, ‘perhaps,’ for I do not believe that life holds nothing happier for you than the sullen content of martyrdom.”