“The Causes of Divorce.” This seemed a useful heading! She read on eagerly.
“Attempt by one of the parties on the life of the other, either personally, or by an accomplice.”
But she had not attempted Mortimer’s life, nor had Rivers attempted that of Mortimer, and though she had heard of cruelty, she had not thought of this definition of it.
“I had no idea the laws of my country were so absurd!” she exclaimed, laying down the blue book in a pet. Then a glance at its cover showed her that the volume she held referred to the Laws of Foreign Countries, and this was the procedure of the Argentine Republic that she was looking at!
She gave that up, and reached down Stephen’s Commentaries, and tried to find some hint there that would be useful to her.
She read on it for a good quarter of an hour, but the legal phrases puzzled her, the scantiness of details left her uncertain, the heavy volumes tired her hands to hold. She was no wiser, and a good deal wearier.
The door opened behind her. Instinctively she turned round.
“Oh, Mortimer, what is a femme sole?”
. . . . . . . .
She laughed to herself, as the train sped southwards through the night, when she thought of her last sight of her husband as he stood in the doorway, apparently transfixed by her extraordinarily indiscreet question. His abrupt volte face and retreat reminded her that an injured husband is not to be used as an Encyclopædia Britannica. Henceforth she was as a noxious animal, to be got rid of, not argued with. She laughed, and then she cried, but finally her offended dignity won the day, and the train deposited a heroine, rugless, hopeless, comfortless, but still a heroine, every inch of her, on the platform at King’s Cross in the early dawn.