s. Taine stood watching her husband coldly, with a curious, speculative
expression on her face that she made no attempt to hide. When his torture
was abated--for the time--leaving him exhausted and trembling with
weakness, she said coldly, "Well, what do you want? What are you doing
here?"

The man lifted his pallid, haggard face and, with a yellow, claw-like hand
wiped the beads of clammy sweat from his forehead; while his deep-sunken
eyes leered at her with an insane light.

The woman was at no pains to conceal her disgust. In her voice there was
no hint of pity. "Didn't Marie tell you that I wished to be alone?"

"Of course," he jeered in his rasping whisper, "that's why I came." He
gave a hideous resemblance to a laugh, which ended in a cough--and, again,
he drew his skinny, shaking hand across his damp forehead "That's the time
that a man should visit his wife, isn't it? When she is alone. Or"--he
grinned mockingly--"when she wishes to be?"

She regarded him with open scorn and loathing. "You unclean beast! Will
you take yourself out of my room?"

He gazed at her, as a malevolent devil might gloat over a soul delivered
up for torture. "Not until I choose to go, my dear."

[Illustration: "Well, what do you want? What are you doing here?"]

Suddenly changing her manner, she smiled with deliberate, mocking humor.
While he watched, she moved leisurely to a deep, many-cushioned couch;
and, arranging the pillows, reclined among them in the careless
abandonment of voluptuous ease and physical content. Openly,
ostentatiously, she exhibited herself to his burning gaze in various
graceful poses--lifting her arms above her head to adjust a cushion more
to her liking; turning and stretching her beautiful body; moving her limbs
with sinuous enjoyment--as disregardful of his presence as though she were
alone. At last she spoke in cool, even, colorless tones; "Perhaps you will
tell me what you want?"

The wretched victim of his own unbridled sensuality shook with
inarticulate rage. Choking and coughing he writhed in his chair--his
emaciated limbs twisted grotesquely; his sallow face bathed in
perspiration his claw-like hands opening and closing; his bloodless lips
curled back from his yellow teeth, in a horrid grin of impotent fury. And
all the while she lay watching him with that pitiless, mocking, smile. It
was as though the malevolent devil and the tortured soul had suddenly
changed places.

When the man could speak,