Emily Soame's father, she remembered it against her will, had been obliged to get a divorce for Emily after her two years of wretched married life.

But Alfred Soames had been quite nice for six months at least.

It seemed as if all this must be a dream, one of those nightmare things, in which you suddenly find yourself married to someone you cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened, because you yourself have had nothing to do with the matter.

She felt that presently she must waken with a start and find herself breathing fast, and panting out, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, I am so glad it's not true! I am so glad it's not true!" But this was true, and there was Nigel.

And she was in a new, unexplored world.