, and his face was deadly white--"_Some other man,
Elly?_"

She was suddenly crimson, a flaming indignation.

"Isaac!" she said, "what do you _mean_? How can you _ask_ me such a
thing?"

"If it's that!" said Sir Isaac, his face suddenly full of malignant
force, "I'll----But I'd _kill_ you...."

"If it isn't that," he went on searching his mind; "why should a woman
get restless? Why should she want to go away from her husband, go
meeting other people, go gadding about? If a woman's satisfied, she's
satisfied. She doesn't harbour fancies.... All this grumbling and
unrest. Natural for your sister, but why should you? You've got
everything a woman needs, husband, children, a perfectly splendid home,
clothes, good jewels and plenty of them, respect! Why should you want to
go out after things? It's mere spoilt-childishness. Of course you want
to wander out--and if there isn't a man----"

He caught her wrist suddenly. "There isn't a man?" he demanded.

"Isaac!" she protested in horror.

"Then there'll be one. You think I'm a fool, you think I don't know
anything all these literary and society people know. I _do_ know. I know
that a man and a woman have got to stick together, and if you go
straying--you may think you're straying after the moon or social work or
anything--but there's a strange man waiting round the corner for every
woman and a strange woman for every man. Think _I_'ve had no
temptations?... Oh! I _know_, I _know_. What's life or anything but
that? and it's just because we've not gone on having more children, just
because we listened to all those fools who said you were overdoing it,
that all this fretting and grumbling began. We've got on to the wrong
track, Elly, and we've got to get back to plain wholesome ways of
living. See? That's what I've come down here for and what I mean to do.
We've got to save ourselves. I've been too--too modern and all that. I'm
going to be a husband as a husband should. I'm going to protect you from
these idees--protect you from your own self.... And that's about where
we stand, Elly, as I make it out."

He paused with the effect of having delivered himself of long
premeditated things.

Lady Harman essayed to speak. But she found that directly she set
herself to speak she sobbed and began weeping. She choked for a moment.
Then she determined she would go on, and if she must cry, she must cry.
She couldn't let a disposition to tears seal her in silence for ever.

"It is