"Yes, you," retorted her mother. "ANY woman. EVERY woman. Unless we have money of our own, we all have trouble with the men about money, sooner or later, in one way or another. And rich men!—why, it's notorious that they're always more or less mean about money. A wife has got to use tact. Why, I even had to use some tact with your father, and he was as generous a man as ever lived. Tact—that's a woman's whole life. You ought to have used tact. You'll go back to him and use tact."
"You don't know him, mamma!" cried Mildred. "He's a monster. He isn't human."
Mrs. Presbury drew a long face and said in a sad, soothing voice: "Yes, I know, dear. Men are very, very awful, in some ways, to a nice woman—with refined, ladylike instincts. It's a great shock to a pure—"
"Oh, gammon!" interrupted Mildred. "Don't be silly, mother. It isn't worth while for one woman to talk that kind of thing to another. I didn't fully know what I was doing when I married a man I didn't love—a man who was almost repulsive to me. But I knew enough. And I was getting along well enough, as any woman does, no matter what she may say—yes, you needn't look shocked, for that's hypocrisy, and I know it now— But, as I was saying, I didn't begin to HATE him until he tried to make a slave of me. A slave!" she shuddered. "He's a monster!"
"A little tact, and you can get everything you want," insisted her mother.
"I tell you, you don't know the man," cried Mildred. "By tact I suppose you mean I could have sold things behind his back—and all that." She laughed. "He hasn't got any back. He had it so arranged that those cold, wicked eyes of his were always watching me. His second wife tried 'tact.' He caught her and drove her into the streets. I'd have had no chance to get a cent, and if I had gotten it I'd not have dared spend it. Do you imagine I ran away from him without having THOUGHT? If there'd been any way of staying on, any way of making things even endurable, I'd have stayed."
"But you've got to go back, Milly," cried her mother, in tears.
"You mean that you can't support me?"
"And your brother Frank—" Mrs. Presbury's eyes flashed and her rather stout cheeks quivered. "I never thought I'd tell anybody, but I'll tell you. I never liked your brother Frank, and he never liked me. That sounds dreadful, doesn't it?"
"No, mother dear," said Mildred gently. "I've learned that life isn't at all as—as everybody pretends."