"It isn't any harm to be a free woman--free in the eye of the law as well as of conscience. I know an excellent lawyer--a Mr. Lyons, a sympathetic and able man. Besides your husband is bound to support you. You must get alimony."
"I wouldn't touch a dollar of his money," Selma answered with scorn. "I intend to support myself. I shall write--work."
"Of course you will, dear; and it will be a boon and a blessing to me to have you in our ranks--one of the new army of self-supporting, self-respecting women. I suppose you are right. I have never had a sixpence. But your husband deserves to be punished. Perhaps it is punishment enough to lose you."
"He will get over that. It is enough for me," she exclaimed, ardently, after a dreamy pause, "that I am separated from him forever--that I am free--free--free."
A night's sleep served to intensify Selma's determination, and she awoke clearly of the opinion that a divorce was desirable. Why remain fettered by a bare legal tie to one who was a husband only in name? Accordingly, in company with Mrs. Earle, she visited the office of James O. Lyons, and took the initiatory steps to dissolve the marriage.
Mr. Lyons was a large, full-bodied man of thirty-five, with a fat, cleanly-shaven, cherubic countenance, an aspect of candor, and keen, solemn eyes. His manner was impressive and slightly pontificial; his voice resonant and engaging. He knew when to joke and when to be grave as an owl. He wore in every-day life a shiny, black frock-coat, a standing collar, which yawned at the throat, and a narrow, black tie. His general effect was that of a cross between a parson and a shrewd Yankee--a happy suggestion of righteous, plain, serious-mindedness, protected against the wiles of human society--and able to protect others--by a canny intelligence. For a young man he had already a considerable clientage. A certain class of people, notably the hard-headed, God-fearing, felt themselves safe in his hands. His magnetic yet grave manner of conducting business pleased Benham, attracting also both the distressed and the bilious portions of the community, and the farmers from the surrounding country. As Mrs. Earle informed Selma, he was in sympathy with all progressive and stimulating ideas, and he already figured in the newspapers politically, and before the courts as a friend of the masses, and a fluent advocate of social reforms. His method of handling Selma's case was smooth. To begin with, he was sympathetic within proper limits, giving her tacitly to understand that, though as a man and brother, he deplored the necessity of extreme measures, he recognized that she had made up her mind, and that compromise was out of the question. To put it concisely, his manner was grieved, but practical. He told her that he would represent to Babcock the futility of contesting a cause, which, on the evidence, must be hopeless, and that, in all probability, the matter could be disposed of easily and without publicity. He seemed to Selma a very sensible and capable man, and it was agreeable to her to feel that he appreciated that, though divorce in the abstract was deplorable, her experience justified and called for the protection of the law.