Miss Pickett, still quite calm, replied:

"No, honey, you know I don't think so."

"Then what _do_ you think?" demanded Sophy, beginning to bristle a little.

"I think," said her cousin, putting down her embroidery on her lap for a moment, and looking quizzical but profound, "that _sometimes_ congeniality is more dangerous than pa.s.sion."

Sophy returned her look a little loftily.

"Dear Sue," said she, "haven't you really taken in that all that side of me is dead ... quite dead?"

"No ... 'playing 'possum,'" flashed Miss Pickett.

"Oh, have your little joke by all means," said Sophy, smiling. "But after all it's '_my_ funeral' as they say out here.... I suppose the corpse knows better than any one else whether it's dead or not."

"On the contrary--the corpse doesn't know anything whatever about it,"

said her cousin. "If you were really a corpse, my lamb, you wouldn't know it."

Sophy looked almost hurt.

"Won't you allow me to know about my own nature, Sue?" she asked.

Now Miss Pickett smiled.

"Nature," said she, "is as fond of revivals as a n.i.g.g.e.r."

On a hot, gusty, dusty day in summer, having returned to Ontowega, they set forth with the lawyer to go before the Judge who was to give Sophy a decree of divorce. The little town looked more hideous than ever in the glare of summer. Such trees as grew along the board sidewalks were grey with dust. The pettish wind flung handfuls of grit into their eyes and nostrils. Sophy followed Mr. Dainton's tall, scraggy figure like a hypnotised "subject." She had but to follow that round-shouldered, obstinate looking back into the yellow-brick square of the "Town Hall"

that loomed just ahead, and she would be free. That lank, black figure with its ravel of grey locks escaping from under a black "wide-awake"

was the Nike that led on to Freedom.

Emerald Dainton, the lawyer's little nine-year-old daughter, skipped at Sophy's side, clinging tightly to her cold, gloveless hand--for Sophy's hands were very cold though the thermometer stood at 85 degrees. Emerald had a "mash" on "pa's last divorce lady." That is what Emerald called Sophy in her thought. She was a shrewdly intelligent child, not unattractive, with the most penetrating green-hazel eyes that Sophy had ever seen. She shrank from these eyes, when they fixed consideringly on her face. She could feel Emerald wondering how and why she had come to Ontowega as "pa's" client. She had an insane impulse every now and then to ask the child her views on divorce. She was sure that she held views on the subject and that they would be crisp and to the point.

They entered the Court House, and Mr. Dainton showed the ladies into a dingy room on the left. Emerald skipped in also as a matter of course.

There were some plain wooden chairs, a table, a stove, and in one corner behind the stove a horsehair sofa.

From one of the wooden chairs rose a mealy tinted but clever looking man of about forty. Mr. Dainton "presented" him as Mr. Wogram. He was Loring's representative. Mr. Dainton then excused himself for a moment.

He returned shortly to say that Judge Boiler was just about to dismiss a case in the Court Room, and would be with them in a few moments.

A desultory conversation on politics then began between Mr. Wogram and Mr. Dainton. Sue and Sophy sat silently side by side on two of the wooden chairs. Sue had put one of her hands on Sophy's and was gripping it tighter than she knew. Emerald had retired to the horsehair sofa behind the stove.

There was a maple tree just outside of the window. An opening in its twigs and leaves made a ridiculous profile against the white-blue dazzling sky. Sophy gazed at this profile, until when she looked away she saw it swimming in green and red on the whitewashed walls. She thought in odds and ends. Then Judge Boiler entered and was introduced.

He sat down finally before the bare table and a.s.sumed his air of office.

He was a heavy, impa.s.sive looking man of fifty with a pale, dyspeptic skin, pale blue eyes and thick whitey-brown hair going grey.

Just as proceedings were about to open, Sophy noticed Emerald's little many-b.u.t.toned boots and red stockings protruding from behind the stove.

She looked at Dainton and the blood swept over her face.

"Excuse me for interrupting ... but your little girl is still in the room, Mr. Dainton," she said.

The lawyer jumped up and drew a protesting Emerald from her horsehair coign of vantage.

"Please, pa ... _lemme_ stay!" she whined. "_I_ might have to get divorced some time. I want to see how you fix it up. _Please_, pa!"

Mr. Dainton whispered fiercely that he'd "smack her if she didn't shut up that minute." Father and daughter disappeared into another room. Then the father reappeared alone, and the case of Loring v. Loring proceeded....

When it was all over and Mr. Wogram had taken his leave with jerky bows to friend and foe alike, Mr. Dainton turned to Sophy, with a curious reminiscence of the facetious manner in which one addresses brides, and said:

"Allow me to congratulate you ... Mrs. _Chesney_!"

Judge Boiler did likewise.

Sophy had one dreadful moment of fear, regret, grief, distaste--the awful vertigo of the irrevocable. She tried to smile conventionally. Sue slipped an arm through hers, held her close without seeming to do so, and talked for her--nice, easy, well-sounding commonplaces. While she was thus talking, Mr. Dainton stalked to the inner door and, flinging it open, called jocosely:

"Come along in, Maldy. The knot's untied...."

Emerald sidled in, looking sulky but curious. She eyed Sophy a moment, then said in a loud whisper:

"Is she really divorced?"

"Sure thing," replied her parent

"You did it quick as that, pa? Truly?"

"Truly," said he.

"My!" exclaimed Emerald, overcome with admiration. "I guess it takes longer to hitch 'em up than to unhitch 'em, when _you_ do the unhitching, pa!"

Then she skipped over to Sophy, and clung to her hand again. Her green-hazel eyes devoured the tall, pale lady's face. She was fairly a-quiver to partic.i.p.ate in the emotions of the divorced heroine.

"Well...." she said. "Now you're _un_-married. Are you happy?"

Sue looked like a hawk about to pounce, but Sophy answered quietly:

"I really don't know, Emerald," she said.

"But you ain't _sorry_ you did it, are you?" persisted the child.

This was too much for the patience of a childless woman. Miss Pickett took Miss Dainton by the hand and led her firmly to her father.

"Please explain to your little girl,", said she, "that there are some occasions where children should not be seen, much less heard."

Mr. Dainton admitted ruddily that "he guessed that was so." But he would have liked to shake the woman who had snubbed his Emerald.

The child pouted a while, then sidled up to Sophy again as they walked through the hot, gusty streets towards the hotel. It seemed impossible for her to resist the double fascination that Sophy exercised over her, as woman and as _divorcee_. Sophy let the child take her pa.s.sive hand.

She was hardly conscious of it, so far was she in a world of alien thought.

Father and daughter escorted them to the Palace Hotel, where they said final good-bys. The two women went upstairs in silence. Without taking off her hat Sophy sat down, still in that brown study. Her eyes were fixed vaguely on the white satin "Regulations" over the door. Miss Pickett moved about, putting articles into her open trunk. They were to leave for Virginia on the midnight train. Every now and then she would glance at Sophy, but she said nothing.

Presently Sophy spoke to her.