u, then? I'm useless. But you read us all, see
everything, and wait only for the mood to do the right. You read me, and
I'm not open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like me in my novel
position. You read my admiration of a beautiful woman and effort to keep
honest. You read my downright preference of what most people would call
poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company. You enlist
among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the
thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking for me; and that's why
you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So much for me.
You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud her
with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, 'arriving in a strange
country, next to friendless; and each new incident bred of a luckless
beginning--I could say more.'

Fleetwood nodded. 'You are read without the words: You read in history,
too, I suppose, that there are two sides to most cases. The loudest is
not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.
That's reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful
shrew, who pretends to suspect anything that's villanous, because she can
hit on no other way of striking.'

'Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world,' muttered Gower. 'Lady
Fleetwood had a troubled period after her marriage. She suffered a sort
of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There's a book by an
Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will
have a distrust of you, as regards the child, until she understands you
by living with you under one roof.'

'Such animals these women are!' Good Lord!' Fleetwood ejaculated. 'I
marry one, and I 'm to take to reading medical books!' He yawned.

'You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature,' said Gower. 'You
hate Nature unless you have it served on a dish by your own cook. That's
the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the sin of
sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the soil,
and trim and point him to grow, and she's an animal for her pains! The
secret of your malady is, you've not yet, though you're on a healthy leap
for the practices of Nature, hopped to the primary conception of what
Nature means. Women are in and of Nature. I've studied them here--had
nothing to do but study them. That most noble of ladies' whole mind was
knotted to preserve her ch