forever. The day after 
to-morrow I go out into the world once more, to begin all 
over again. Up to the present my life has been a most 
miserable failure all but four short months." She paused 
suddenly ; the dreary, lovely face lit up with a sort of . 
" All but four short months oh, let me always except that 
when he made me his wife, and I was happy, happy, happy ! 
Joan, if I had died three weeks ago when that was born, you 
might have had engraven on my tombstone the epitaph that 
was once inscribed over another lost woman ; 1 have been 
most happy and most miserable. " 

I listened silently, touched, in  of myself, by the un 
speakable  of her look and tone. 

" All that is over and done with," she said, after a little. 
" I am not to die, it seems. I am going to begin my life, as 
I say, all over again. Nothing that befalls me in the future 
can be any worse than what lies behind. It does not fall 
to the lot of all women to be divorced wives at the age of 
eighteen." 

She laughed drearily. She sat by the window in her fa 
vorite easy-chair, looking out while