ght in the face:

"Is it true?" he asked, in a voice trembling with rage.

Lily, without replying, lowered her eyes as though to say yes, like a good
little wife, oh, _so_ sorry to offend her husband!

"And," said Trampy, choking with shame, "you married me for 'that:' me,
Trampy!"

"Yes," said Lily confusedly.

"Damn you!" cried Trampy. "Oh, if we weren't married for good, wouldn't I
just make you sleep out to-night!"

CHAPTER II

Poor Lily! She was Trampy's little wife, his little wife for ever! And
life, monotonous and common, followed its usual course: a week here, a
week there; and the theater every night at the fixed time, according
to the scene-plot which they went and consulted on reaching the stage:
"X, Corridor, 9.5; Z, Wood, 10.17; Y, Palace, 11.10," and so on. And
for Trampy it was an everlasting grumbling at his ill-luck, a dull anger
at "playing 'em in," so sure was he of seeing his name first,
always--"Garden, 8.30, Trampy Wheel-Pad"--he who had had such a success
in England with his red-hot stove. It was no use his saying to himself
that it wouldn't last, that it would be better next week. It was just as
though done on purpose. He played 'em in, always, from Bremen to
Brunswick, from Leipzig to Madgeburg:

"I wish I knew the son of a gun who has his knife into me!" growled
Trampy, persuaded that he was the victim of an agent's jealousy, or else
the stage-managers didn't understand their business.

"If you had more talent," thought Lily to herself, "that sort of thing
wouldn't happen. I'd like to see you with Pa: _he'd_ show you, _he'd_ make
you stir your stumps, you rusty biker!"

However, she was careful not to say so to him, for fear of blows; and Lily
knew that, if ever she received them once, twice, without returning them,
it was all up with her, she would lapse under the yoke again, it would
become a habit: there would be nothing for it but to leave her husband, if
she wished to avoid slaps, just as she had left her family, to avoid
whippings.

That would have been too grotesque. She did not want to give Pa and Ma the
satisfaction of seeing her unhappily married. Lily armed herself with
patience; and she needed it! Trampy was in a frightful temper, said that
he would have been the ideal husband, if she had been the little wife he
had dreamed of: but to think that she had married him for "that!"

Now it was the constant allusion to "that" which made him die with shame.
Everywhe