I stood for a few moments watching, and saw her
approach her husband, and exchange a few smiling words with him in
the presence of their friends. I, knowing the agony that was in the
hearts of that desperate young couple, marvelled anew at the
discipline of caste.
9. She sat in my big arm-chair; and how proud I was of her, and how
thrilled by her courage. Above all, however, I was devoured by
curiosity. "Tell me!" I exclaimed.
"There's so much," she said.
"Tell me why you are leaving him."
"Mary, because I don't love him. That's the one reason. I have
thought it out--I have thought of little else for the last year. I
have come to see that it is wrong for a woman to live with a man she
does not love. It is the supreme crime a woman can commit."
"Ah, yes!" I said. "If you have got that far!"
"I have got that far. Other things have contributed, but they are
not the real things--they might have been forgiven. The fact that he
had this disease, and made my child blind----"
"Oh! You found out that?"
"Yes, I found it out."
"How?"
"It came to me little by little. In the end, he grew tired of
pretending, I think." She paused for a moment, then went on, "The
trouble was over the question of my obligations as a wife.
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