than such a rigid and vindictive saint, who had no sympathy with the frailties of humanity.
She was thinking about her divorced husband tonight, for she never ceased to think about him—the man she had once loved, as far as she was capable of love. Affection to her meant always a misery and a reproach, the dead more to be considered than the living, and yesterday a better thing than to-day. She was the woman who ever casts her glances backwards, and hugged regret as a greater treasure than possession.
She was morbidly and savagely restless to-night, pacing the narrow confines of that chamber as a tigress paces its cage; now looking from her window with a muttered imprecation against the beauty and stillness of the night, the brightness of the moon on the river, the levity and laughter of those poverty-stricken and hard-worked women who lived under her, who could be happy in spite of their miserable surroundings; now turning over the pages of that open Book with feverish fingers to find some passage suitable to her frame of mind.
She had done right to liberate herself from that bondage of iniquity, to repudiate and divorce her husband, who had so grievously wronged her—how, she could not now definitely say. Yet he must have done so, to fill her with the savage feelings which controlled her.
The room and the atmosphere were clear to her eyes. She felt alone and lonely, as she had been for long and as she would be while life remained, for she could not love again. She no longer had the capability of enjoyment, therefore to her all pleasure was a snare and a delusion.
