"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own living some way."
"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."
"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your divorce?"
"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."
"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have to cook your own food—and tend the baby."
"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this was, I wouldn't have started."
"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcées.
She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."
"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."
"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."