THIRTYTHE third letter of my three was a command to appear in court to answer a suit for divorce.
I did so, and standing before a wigged and robed judge, I admitted committing the charge. But I would not be branded with a white-hot iron; I would not be whipped by a beadle or stoned by the folk. I was only instructed that my husband’s suit for divorce a mensa et toro was hereby granted, and I was never in his lifetime, under pain of the charge of bigamy, to marry again. The judge himself was sorry that so young a woman must be forbidden the joys of matrimony, but as ye sow, so shall ye reap. Moreover, by my rash and immoral act, I had deprived my husband, as long as he lived, of the same joys.
I went away, and after awhile the shapes and shadows and silences of the courtroom passed out of
