"But remember it is nothing to you whether he is alive or dead." "Nothing to me to know that you would be freed from this horrible slavery! It is not of my own gain, but of yours, I am thinking." He knew that what he had said was not wholly true, yet, in the heat of the moment, he knew that to embody in words the best that might be was to give himself the best chance of realizing it; and he did not believe now that her fierce assertion of indifference for him was true either, but his best self applauded her for it.

For a minute he could not tell what Josephine would do next.

She stood looking at him helplessly; it seemed as though her subsiding anger had left a fear of herself in its place.

But what he dreaded most was that her composure should return.
"Do not be angry with me," he said; "I ask because it is right that I should know.

Can you not get rid of this bond of marriage ?" "Do you think," she asked, "that the good God and the Holy Virgin would desire me to put myself--my life--all that is sacred--into courts and newspapers?
Do you think the holy Mother of God--looking down upon me, her child--wants me to get out of trouble in _that_ way ?" Josephine had asked the question first in distress; then, with a face of peerless scorn, she seemed to put some horrid scene from before her with her hand.