And now Kedzie Thropp was satisfied at last—at least for the time being. She was a plump kitten, replete and purr-full, and the world was her catnip-ball.

There was no visible horizon to her wealth. Her name was one of the oldest, richest, noblest in the republic. She was a Dyckman now, double-riveted to the name with a civil license and a religious certificate. Tommie Gilfoyle had politely died, and like an obliging rat had died outside the premises. Hardly anybody knew that she had married him, and nobody who knew was going to tell.

Kedzie forgot Charity in the joy of ordering a millionaire's luncheon. This was not easy. She was never a glutton for food; excitement dimmed what appetite she had, and her husband, as she knew, hated made dishes with complex sauces.

Kedzie was baffled by the futility of commanding a lot of things she could not eat, just for the fun of making a large bill. She was like the traditional prospector who struck it rich and, hastening to civilization, could think of nothing to order but “forty dollars' worth of pork and beans.”

Kedzie had to satisfy her plutocratic pride by bossing the waiter about, by complaining that the oysters were not chilled and the sherry was. She sent back the salad for redressing and insisted that the meat was from cold storage. She was no longer the poor girl afraid of the waiter.

Kedzie was having a good time, but she regretted that her wedding-ring was so small. She felt that wives ought to wear some special kind of plume, the price of the feather varying with the bank account. Kedzie would have had to carry an umbrella of plumes.

Still, she did pretty well on her exit. She went out like a million dollars. But her haughtiness fell from her when she reached home and found Mr. and Mrs. Thropp comfortably installed there, saving hotel bills.

Charity Coe had gone out feeling a million years old. She left the presence of Kedzie in a mood of tragic laughter. She was in one of those contemptible, ridiculous plights in which good people frequently find themselves as a result of kindliness and self-sacrifice.

For well-meant actions are as often and as heavily punished in this world as ill-meant—if indeed the word punishment has any respectability left. It is certainly obsolescent.

Many great good men, such as Brand Whitlock, the saint of Belgium, had been saying that the whole idea of human punishment of human beings is false, cruel, and futile, that it has never accomplished anything worth while for either victim or inflictor. They place it among the ugly follies, the bloody superstitions that mankind has clung to with a fanaticism impervious to experience. They would change the prisons from hells to schools and hospitals.

Even the doctrine of a hell beyond the grave is rather neglected now, except by such sulphuric press agents as Mr. Sunday. But in this world we cannot sanely allege that vice is punished and virtue rewarded until we know better what virtue is and what is vice. All that it is safe to say is that punishment is a something unpleasant and reward a something pleasant that follows a deed—merely follows in point of time, not in proof of judgment.

So the mockery of Charity's good works was neither a punishment nor a ridicule. It was a coincidence, but a sad one. Charity had befriended Kedzie without making a friend thereby; she had lost, indeed, her good friend Jim. Charity's affection for Jim would make her suspect in Kedzie's eyes, and Kedzie's gratitude had evidently already cut its sharper-than-a-serpent's wisdom tooth.

Charity had been patient with her husband and had lost him. She had asked the Church for her freedom and had been threatened with exile. Then her husband had demanded his freedom and forced her to choose between blackening her own soul with the brand “divorcÉe” or blackening her husband's mistress's baby's soul with the brand “illegitimate.”

She had preferred to take the shame upon herself. But who would give her credit? She knew how false was the phrase that old Ovid uttered but could not comfort even himself with, “The mind conscious of rectitude laughs at the lies of gossip.” No woman can afford such security.

Charity had such a self-guying meekness, indeed, that instead of clothing herself in the robes of martyrdom she ridiculed herself because of one thing: In a pigeonhole of her brain a little back-thought had lurked, a dim hope that if she gave her husband the divorce he implored she might be free to remold her shattered life nearer to her heart's desire—with Jim Dyckman. Her husband, indeed, had taunted her with that intention, and now she had no sooner launched her good name down the slippery ways of divorce than she found Jim Dyckman married and learned that her premature and unwomanly hopes for him were ludicrously thwarted!

She went to McNiven's office with a dark life ahead of her. She had no desire left except to disentangle herself from Peter Cheever's life as quietly and swiftly as possible. She told McNiven this and said:

“How quickly can the ghastly job be finished?”

“Theoretically it could be done in a day, but practically it takes a little longer. For we must avoid the look of collusion like the plague. So we'll allow, say, a week. If we're lucky with our judges, it may take less.”

Then he outlined the steps to be taken. An unusual chain of circumstances enabled him to carry them out with unexpected neatness and despatch, so that the case became a very model of how gracefully the rigid laws of divorce could be manipulated in the Year of Our Lord 1916 and of the Founding of the Republic 140.

It may be interesting to outline the procedure as a social document in chicanery, or social surgery, as one wills to call it.

McNiven first laid under Charity's eyes a summons and complaint against Peter Cheever. She glanced over it and found it true except that Zada L'Etoile was not named; Cheever's alleged income was vastly larger than she imagined, and her claim for alimony was exorbitant.

Her first question was: “Who is this unknown woman going by the name of Sarah Tishler? I thought Miss L'Etoile was to be the only woman mentioned.”

McNiven explained: “L'Etoile is her stage name. She doesn't know her real name herself, for she was taken from the foundling-asylum as a child by a family named Tishler. We have taken advantage of that disadvantage.”

Charity bowed to this, but she protested the income credited to her husband.

“Peter doesn't earn half as much as that.”

“How do you know what he earns?” said McNiven.

“He's told me often enough.”

“Do you believe all he told you?”

“No; but, anyway, I don't want any of his old alimony. I have money enough of my own.”

“That can be arranged later, but if you don't swear to this as it lies you can't have your divorce.”

“Why not?”

“Because there has to be a contest, and we've got to give his lawyer something to fight.”

Charity yielded wearily. She fought against making an affidavit to the truth of the complaint, but when McNiven said, “No affidavit, no divorce,” she took her oath before the clerk who was called in as a notary public.

“Now you may go home,” said McNiven; and Charity stole out, feeling herself a perjured criminal. Then the divorce-mill began to grind.

A process-server from McNiven's office went across Broadway to Tessier's office, where Cheever was waiting. He handed the papers to Cheever, who handed them to Tessier, who hastily dictated an answer denying the adultery, the alleged income, and the propriety of the alimony claimed.

Tessier and Cheever visited McNiven in his office and served him with this answer. The two lawyers then dictated an agreement to a reference, Tessier adding a statement that he considered his client equipped with a good defense and that he intended to oppose the suit in good faith.

Their clerks took this to the County Court House in City Hall Square and filed it with the clerk of the Supreme Court, Special Term, Part II.

Justice Cardwell, before leaving his chambers, read the papers and issued an order naming as referee the lawyer Henry Firth.

Here for a moment the veil of secrecy was rent, for this order could not be suppressed. It was published in The Law Journal the next morning, and the eager reporters reading therein that Mrs. Peter Cheever was suing her husband for a divorce on statutory grounds, dashed to the records and learned that she accused him of undue intimacy with an unknown woman going by the name of Sarah Tishler.

By selecting an obscure town this publicity might have been deferred, but it would have meant delay in the case as well.

A flock of reporters sped like hawks for Charity's home, where they were denied admittance; for Cheever's office, where they were told that he was out of town; and even for Zada L'Etoile's apartment, where they were informed that she had left the State, as indeed she had. Sarah Tishler had a right, being named as co-respondent, to enter the case and defend her name, but she waived the privilege.

The evening papers made what they could of the sensation, but nobody mentioned Zada, for nobody knew that fate had tried to conceal her by naming her Tishler, and nobody quite dared to mention her without legal sanction.

On the next day Lawyer Firth held court in his office. Reporters were excluded, and the lawyers and detectives and Cheever and Charity, who had to be present, declined to answer any of the questions rained upon them in the corridors and the elevators.

Mr. Firth was empowered to swear in witnesses and take testimony. The evidence of the detectives, corroborated by the evidence of a hall-boy and a janitor and by proof of the installation of the dictagraph, seemed conclusive to Mr. Firth.

Cheever denied that he had committed the alleged adultery and gave proof that his income was not as stated. Attorney Tessier evaded the evidence of adultery, but fought hard against the evidence of prosperity. Referee Firth made his report finding the defendant guilty of the statutory offense, and ordered a decree of divorce, with a diminished alimony. He appended a transcript of the evidence and filed it with the Clerk of the County of New York. The statutory fee for a referee was ten dollars a day, but the lawyers had quietly agreed on the payment of a thousand dollars for expediting the case. With this recompense Mr. Firth ended his duties in the matter.

McNiven prepared a motion to confirm the report of the referee and took it to Tessier, who accepted service for his client. McNiven then went to the county clerk and filed a notice that the motion would be called up the next morning. The clerk put it on the calendar of Special Term, Part III.

The next morning McNiven appeared before Justice Palfrey, submitted his motion, and asked for an interlocutory decree. He left his paper with the clerk. During the afternoon Justice Palfrey looked over the referee's report and decided to grant McNiven's motion. In view of the prominence of the contestants and since he had heard of Charity's good works, and felt sure that she had suffered enough in the wreck of her home, he ordered the evidence sealed. This harmed nobody but the hungry reporters and the gossip-appetite of the public.

McNiven was waiting in the office of the clerk, and as soon as he learned that the judge had granted the motion he submitted the formal orders to be signed. The clerk entered the interlocutory decree. And now the marriage was ended except for three months of grace.

The first day after that period had passed McNiven submitted an affidavit that there had been no change in the feelings of the parties and there was no good reason why the decree should not be granted. He made up the final papers, gave Tessier notice, and deposited the record with the clerk. Justice Cruden, then sitting in Special Term, Part III., signed the judgment. And the deed was done. Mrs. Cheever was permitted to resume her maiden name, but that meant too much confusion; she needed the “Mrs.” for protection of a sort.

The divorce carried with it a clause forbidding the guilty husband to marry any one else before five years had passed. But while the divorce was legal all over the world, this restriction ended at the State bounds.

So Peter Cheever and Zada L'Etoile went over into the convenient realm of New Jersey the next morning, secured a license, and on the following day were there made man and wife before all the world. This entitled them to a triumphant return to New York. And now Peter Cheever had also done the honorable thing. This “honorable thing” business will be one of the first burdens dropped by the men when the women perfect their claim to equality.

In about two weeks a daughter was born to the happy twain. Thanks to Charity's obliging nature, it was christened in church and accepted in law as a complete Cheever. Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Cheever now began to live (more or less) happily ever after (temporarily).

Altogether it was a triumph of legal, social, and surgical technic. It outraged many virtuous people. There was a good deal of harsh criticism of everybody concerned. The worthies who believe that divorce is the cause of the present depraved state of the United States bewailed one more instance of the vile condition of the lawless Gomorrah. The eternal critics of the rich used the case as another text in proof of the complete control that wealth has over our courts, though seventy-five divorces to obscure persons were granted at the same time without difficulty, with little expense and no newspaper punishment.

Dr. Mosely wrote Charity a letter of heartbroken condemnation, and she slunk away to the mountains to escape from the reproach of all good people and to recuperate for another try at the French war hospitals. She had let her great moving-picture project lapse. She felt hopelessly out of the world and she was afraid to face her friends. Still, she had money and her “freedom,” and one really cannot expect everything.