Sophy stood by the open window of her old nursery bedroom at Sweet-Waters. It was only ten o'clock, but she had come up early this first evening. She wanted to be alone. Now that she had told Charlotte and the Judge how things were with her, it was a strain to live up to their pained conception of the situation. She felt it a reproach that in spite of all, such an irrepressible fount of glee bubbled within her. It was not happiness certainly, yet too much akin to it not to be out of keeping with her present outward state. Her heart would sing in spite of her. It was like a naughty, overexuberant child shouting week-a-day songs at a funeral. It sang: "I am free! I am free! I am free!" The sky was spread with clouds. Behind these clouds was a hidden moon. Its rays filtered through, and this soft, grey moonlight was eerily lovely—elfin-like.

From this pale fleece of cloud fell a light shower, trilling on the roof of the east wing beneath her window. And from field and wood and hill went up another trilling, exquisitely musical and plaintive—the clear, sweet, myriad flutes of autumn crickets. So that heaven and earth seemed doubly woven together by this interlacing of lovely sound, the one descending, the other ascending.

The rain came softly in her face. She held up her face to it, loving the delicate, cool touch upon her lips and eyelids.

As usual, Sweet-Waters had given her to herself again. She was just Sophy Taliaferro once more. Sophy Chesney and Sophy Loring were poor, wind-driven waifs, somewhere far away in the outer deserts of her mind. To-morrow Charlotte and Joe wished "to talk very seriously with her." This had been Charlotte's parting word that night. Well—to-morrow was twelve hours away. Now she would just be Sophy Taliaferro.

But she waked up next morning to find herself unmistakably Sophy Loring once more.

Her heart was very heavy. Life had no taste. The future rose before her like a cyclopean wall, which could not be scaled or dug under and in which there was no door.

Her heart winced and shrank from the long, painful scenes with Morris that she apprehended. She was quite sure that he had no real love left for her, yet she knew his nature. She feared that the very fact of finding himself about to lose her would kindle in him a fictitious ardour. It might well be that, as the unattainable, she would once more seem his heart's desire.

After breakfast she went with Joe and Charlotte to Joe's study. Bobby and Winks were having a gorgeous time playing "Indians" all over the place. As she sat in the open window, Sophy could hear the voices of the two "Braves," rising in shrill, ecstatic warwhoops from the straw-stack near the stables. She smiled. At least Bobby was thoroughly happy in the new state of things.

She was seated on the low window-ledge, Charlotte opposite her. The Judge had established himself in the revolving chair before his desk. He felt the need of some strong, dignified background during the coming interview. His sombre, official-looking desk, with its piles of legal documents and tomes, afforded him this spiritual sustainment. He was very nervous. Sophy was so "hard to tackle" sometimes. "Rash" was the disconcerting adjective that kept rising in his mind. Sophy was so "almighty rash"! He thanked his stars that rashness was not Charlotte's characteristic. "Firmness" described his helpmeet. He felt that this firmness would indeed make her a true helpmeet in the present case. There was certainly no help coming from Sophy herself. She was (they both thought) most inconsiderately waiting for them to "begin."

The day was exquisitely temperate and golden after last night's showers. She had put on one of her old duck skirts and thin white blouses. Her hair was "clubbed" and fastened with a black bow as of old. She was, outwardly at least, even defiantly Sophy Taliaferro. Charlotte felt that it was almost improper of Sophy to look so like her former self, so "unmarried," as it were, "after all she had been through." But Sophy was Sophy. The most that they could hope was by great "tactfulness" to persuade her to be "reasonable" on certain points.

The Judge cleared his throat. Sophy had her hands clasped about her knee, one slim, brown-shod foot was dangling. It was a disconcertingly "unmatronly" attitude. The Judge glanced nervously at Charlotte. Her eyebrows said: "Go on." He cleared his throat a second time:

"A-rrrum!"

Sophy turned her head and looked inquiringly at him.

"Yes?" she said.

The Judge flushed as his eyes met hers. Good man ... it embarrassed him to meet the eyes of one of his own womenkind whose wedded husband had actually embraced an "abandoned minx" under their own roof. Charlotte had termed Belinda Horton an "abandoned minx." The Judge considered the term apposite. So Belinda figured thus in their thoughts from that moment. But all this came too perilously near to mentioning the seventh commandment in "the presence of a lady" not to cause the dear, old-fashioned man acute discomfort.

"Well, Joe?" said Sophy again, as he hesitated.

"It's ... it's all ... mighty involved, Sophy," he stammered, looking down at the snowstorm paper-weight which he had picked up and was turning nervously round and round.

"Yes, Joe. I know that," she said gravely. "That's what I want you to help me about."

"Divorce is a mighty serious—er—ugly thing...."

"But not as ugly as marriage that is no marriage, Joe."

The Judge rumpled his smoky wreath the wrong way.

"Yes ... I know how you must feel...." he admitted unhappily.

"No, Joe. Nobody but a woman can know how she feels," put in Charlotte, reddening in her turn.

"Well ... I reckon I can give a mighty shrewd guess at it," said the Judge.

"It's very simple," Sophy said. "I want to be free. I don't think I've any false vanity about it. I did have at first. But then, you see, I was mistaken, as well as Morris. I don't feel hard to Morris. It really isn't all his fault...."

"Oh!" said Charlotte. She was quite crimson now.

"No, Chartie, it is not," Sophy persisted. "But I can't enter into all that...."

"I should think not!"

"I only want to get free and to set him free, as soon as possible."

"He oughtn't to be free—the idea!" cried Charlotte indignantly.

Sophy shook her head at her, smiling.

"Oh, Chartie," she said, "we aren't in the 'dark backward' of the Victorian era! Why shouldn't he be free to live his life as he wants to, as well as I?"

"That's downright irreligious, Sophy!" cried her sister with passion.

"I don't think so," said Sophy mildly.

The Judge intervened.

"Come," he said nervously, "don't let's squabble over side-issues."

"'Side-issues'! Joe!" exclaimed his wife.

"Oh, well ... don't let's squabble, at any rate," he said huntedly. "The main point, what we're here to discuss, is Sophy's wish to be divorced."

"And I think she's perfectly justified!" snapped Charlotte.

The Judge resumed, addressing Sophy:

"Now, the question is, what will be ... er ... Mr. Loring's attitude in the matter?"

"I think he'll oppose it ... at first," said Sophy.

The Judge looked curious.

"Why only 'at first'?" he asked.

Sophy said quietly and rather sadly:

"Because it isn't in his nature to keep up anything for long."

"Mh!" said the Judge.

He took up the paper-weight which he had laid aside and turned it so vigorously that the little cottage and figures within the glass-ball were almost blotted from sight by the mimic snowstorm.

"Divorce is a slow affair in Virginia," he said at last.

"Then I'd rather get mine in the West," said Sophy.

Charlotte looked at her in horror.

"Oh, Sophy!" she cried. "No! ... you wouldn't!... It's ... it's so vulgar!"

"Life is vulgar," said Sophy.

"Oh, my dear!"

"I mean it in the big sense. Vulgar means common to all—to all people. So I say life is vulgar ... and the longing for freedom is vulgar. No one has ever longed for freedom as slaves have, I suppose. Well, I am a slave ... and I long for freedom. I long for it so that I want it quickly. I want it as one wants water when one's famishing, and bread when one's starving. I'm not so aristocratic in my hunger and thirst that I prefer to wait through dignified years for a bit of stale bread. I want my loaf now ... and I want the whole loaf ... not half...."

Sophy was indeed speaking with "vulgar" intensity. She "let herself go" because she wanted Joe and Charlotte to understand once for all that there was no use in trying to make her behave "reasonably."

Charlotte's small mouth was tight shut. The Judge looked rather pale. Just as he had thought, Sophy was evincing rashness in its most aggravated form.