ere was a lust in her blood for side-streets, laneways
and corners.

"Marriage!" said she, and she was woebegone--"Marriage will be for
ever."

"So will heaven," he retorted comfortingly.

"So will--the other place," said she, with a giggle, and crushed him
under the feeling that she envisaged him as the devil of that
particular Hades, instead of as an unfortunate sinner plucked up by the
heels and soused into the stew-pan by his wife.

He addressed himself--

"When we are married," said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that
you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith
you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks
before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on
me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour
two streets off. You've got to settle down and quit tricks. A wife
has no one else to deceive but her husband, that's all she can want
tricks for, and there's not going to be any in my house. It's all
right for a pretty girl to be a bit larky----"

"Am I really pretty?" said she, deeply interested and leaning forward
with her hands clasping her knees--"Do you really and truly think I am
pretty? I met a man one time, he had a brown moustache and blue eyes,
outside a tailor's shop in Georges Street, with a public-house on one
side, and he said he thought I was very pretty: he told me what his
name was, but I forget it: maybe, you know him: he wears a tweed suit
with a stripe and a soft hat--Let me see, no, his name began with a
T----"

"His name was Thief," he roared, "and that was his profession too.
Don't let me catch you talking with a strange man, or you'll get hurt,
and his brown eyes will be mixed up with his blue moustache."

So married they were, six months now, and the wits were nearly worried
out of him in trying to keep pace with his wife's vagaries. Matrimony
had not cured her love for side-streets, short cuts and chance
acquaintances, and she was gradually making her husband travel at a
similar tangent. When they started to go to church he would find, to
his amazement, that they were in the Museum. If they journeyed with a
Museum for an objective they were certain to pull up in the Botanic
Gardens. A call on a friend usually turned into a visit to a theatre
or a walk by the Dodder--

"Heart-scalded I am," said he, "with her hopping and trotting. She
travels sideways like a crab, so she does. She h