'Will you stay with me, dear?'

'Oh, Stella, let me, let me! I want to be near to you whilst I may!'

Stella's child slept peacefully in a crib; the voices were too low
to wake it. Almost like another child, Adela allowed herself to be
undressed.

'Shall I leave a light?' Stella asked.

'No, I can sleep. Only let me feel your arms.'

They lay in unbroken silence till both slept.

CHAPTER XXIII

In a character such as Mutimer's there will almost certainly be found a
disposition to cruelty, for strong instincts of domination, even of the
nobler kind, only wait for circumstances to develop crude tyranny--the
cruder, of course, in proportion to the lack of native or acquired
refinement which distinguishes the man. We had a hint of such things in
Mutimer's progressive feeling with regard to Emma Vine. The possibility
of his becoming a tyrannous husband could not be doubted by any one who
viewed him closely.

There needed only the occasion, and this at length presented itself in
the form of jealousy. Of all possible incentives it was the one most
calamitous, for it came just when a slow and secret growth of passion
was making demand for room and air. Mutimer had for some time been at
a loss to understand his own sensations; he knew that his wife was
becoming more and more a necessity to him, and that too when the
progress of time would have led him to expect the very opposite. He knew
it during her absence at Exmouth, more still now that she was away in
London. It was with reluctance that he let her leave home, only his
satisfaction in her intimacy with the Westlakes and his hopes for Alice
induced him to acquiesce in her departure. Yet he could show nothing of
this. A lack of self-confidence, a strange shyness, embarrassed him as
often as he would give play to his feelings. They were intensified by
suppression, and goaded him to constant restlessness. When at most a
day or two remained before Adela's return, he could no longer resist the
desire to surprise her in London.

Not only did he find her in the company of the man whom he had formerly
feared as a rival, but her behaviour seemed to him distinctly to betray
consternation at his arrival. She was colourless, agitated, could
not speak. From that moment his love was of the quality which in its
manifestations is often indistinguishable from hatred. He resolved
to keep her under his eye, to enforce to the uttermost his marital
authority, to make her pay