seriously injured him in sheer idleness. If I had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. Oh! if I could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm I did, and so get the sin off my soul that way!... Well, there's the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe I am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. When a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. I've been a rake, and the single point I ask you is, considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only missing, will keep any man from marrying me until seven years have passed—am I free to entertain such an idea, even though 'tis a sort of penance—for it will be that. I hate the act of marriage under such circumstances, and the class of women I should seem to belong to by doing it!"
"It seems to me that all depends upon whe'r you think, as everybody else does, that your husband is dead."
"Yes—I've long ceased to doubt that. I well know what would have brought him back long before this time if he had lived."
"Well, then, in a religious sense you must
