"I want to make the conditions of it fair to women," I said.

"But then more women will get it! And there are so many divorced
women now! Papa says that divorce is a greater menace than
Socialism!"

She spoke of Suffrage in England, where women were just beginning to
make public disturbances. Surely I did not approve of their leaving
their homes for such purposes as that! As tactfully as I could, I
suggested that conditions in England were peculiar. There was, for
example, the quaint old law which permitted a husband to beat his
wife subject to certain restrictions. Would an American woman submit
to such a law? There was the law which made it impossible for a
woman to divorce her husband for infidelity, unless accompanied by
desertion or cruelty. Surely not even her father would consider that
a decent arrangement! I mentioned a recent decision of the highest
court in the land, that a man who brought his mistress to live in
his home, and compelled his wife to wait upon her, was not
committing cruelty within the meaning of the English law. I heard
Sylvia's exclamation of horror, and met her stare of incredulity;
and then suddenly I thought of Claire, and a little chill ran over
me. It was a difficult hour, in more ways than one, that of my first
talk with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver!

I soon made the discovery that, childish as her ignorance was, there
was no prejudice in it. If you brought her a fact, she did not say
that it was too terrible to be true, or that the Bible said
otherwise, or that it was indecent to know about it. Nor, when you
met her next, did you discover that she had forgotten it. On the
contrary, you discovered that she had followed it to its remote