"Poor little girl," he said kindly. He could not help it that they were the words of a compassionate friend, rather than of an injured husband.
She shook her head. "It is the first you have known of it, Jack," she said; "but I have known it for a long while, and I have not been unhappy."
"And you care for him?"
She nodded.
"Are you certain of it? You have seen so very little of him, and you may be mistaken."
If he had had any hope, it vanished before her unhesitating, positive, "No; I am not mistaken. Oh, no!"
He took a chair facing her, as she put the letter back in its envelope and laid it in her work-basket. It was very unlike anything he had ever imagined concerning situations of the sort. But then he was not imaginative. "Should you be glad to be free to marry him?" he asked, in a spirit of unbiassed discussion.
She looked at him in perplexity and surprise. "How could I be? There is no use talking about it."
He hesitated, then blurted it out, in spite of the inward warning that it would be unwise. "I could let you free yourself."
His glance fell before hers of dismay, disapproval, and anger—an anger so righteous that he felt himself to be altogether in the wrong. "Do you mean divorce?" She said it like an unholy word.