h ... but you're hard ..." he groaned.

Now Sophy had her moment of bitterness.

"I know," she said, "that the perfect wife is supposed to be motherly
when her husband's fancy strays--and lover-like when it turns home
again. But I am not perfect in any way. And I don't think I'm hard when
I ask for truth between us."

Loring dropped his hands and uncovered eyes ablaze with a helpless fury
of regret and vindictiveness.

"I wish to God the girl had never been born!" he cried.

"You haven't answered me yet," said Sophy.

He gazed at her with a sort of braggadocio of defiance for an instant,
then dropped his face into his hands again.

"Oh ... it's no use!..." he lamented. "We are low brutes ... men are low
brutes.... Passion is a low thing...."

"No--real passion is not low," Sophy broke in on him.

"You know what I mean...." he muttered.

"Yes. I do. But don't call mere sensuality passion. Real passion is like
a great, flowering tree. Its roots strike deep into the earth ... its
crown is among the stars. Do you call a red rose 'low' because it
springs from the earth?"

"How you catch one up!" protested Loring moodily.

She rushed on:

"I do hate so to hear that word misused--abused! Sensual fancies are low
because they have no soul ... no flowering. They are like truffles ...
all of the earth earthy. Yes ... there are truffle-loves," she ended
bitterly.

"And men, you think, are like swine rooting for truffles!" he muttered.

"Sometimes ... when Circe is about...." she admitted.

Morris got up and leaned again upon the mantelpiece. He heaved a
disconsolate sigh.

"Oh, Lord!... What a talk for a man to have with his wife!" he said
heavily.

XLI

Sophy sat watching him, and her heart yearned over him. In spite of her
flash of bitterness, she did feel truly mother-like towards him. He
seemed to her so young--so very, touchingly young as he leaned there
against the old, smoke-toned ivory of the carved mantelpiece, grasping
the ledge, his forehead on the back of his hand. She knew how crushingly
he was realising that he had "made a mess of things." But then--he _had_
made a mess of things. She was powerless to comfort him there. If she
could only show him how much better it would be not to try to rearrange
this tangle--but to step free of it, and begin over ... that there was
no real adjustment of their two lives--their two utterly different
natures, possible.... Could she show him? Well ... sh