"Always?"
"The law allows them the remedy of judicial separation."
Stainton was smoking a cigar. He puffed at it thoughtfully.
"Judicial separation," he finally said, "has always struck me as begging the question. It denies liberty and yet winks at license. A good marriage ought to be guarded and a bad one broken."
"That," replied von Klausen, "is the American view."
"Not at all. We have all sorts of views—and there is one great trouble. You can get a divorce for nothing in Nevada, and you can't get it for anything in South Carolina. The South Carolina result is that they have had to pass a law there removing illegitimacy as a bar to succession."
"Nevertheless," said von Klausen, "except for Japan, there are more divorces in the United States than in any other country in the world. I was told, while I was in Washington, that the American statistics were—they showed seventy-nine divorces to every hundred thousand of your population. Your divorces increase more rapidly than your population; they increase more rapidly than your marriage-rate."
"I don't know about that," said Stainton; "although I believe that I have seen some such figures given somewhere, but I am clear on one point: the man that treats his wife badly ought not to be allowed the chance to have a wife any longer." He looked at Muriel, seated at his side; he smiled and patted her hand as it lay on the arm of her chair. "Don't you think so, dear?" he asked.
"Of course I do," said she. "Don't you, Captain von Klausen?"