ts were facts, and destiny was
destiny and had to be borne.

"What business?"

"You know."

"Oh! That!... Well, can't you go after tea?"

Incurable!

"Here, lass!" he said, with a laugh. "If I stop arguing here I shall
miss him."

He bent down, and prepared his lips to kiss her. He smiled superiorly,
indulgently. He was the stronger. She defeated him sometimes; she
gravely defeated him in the general arrangement and colour of their
joint existence; but he was the stronger. She had known it for over ten
years. They had had two tremendous, critical, highly dangerous battles.
He had won them both. Lois had wanted to be married in Paris. He had
been ready to agree until suddenly it occurred to him that French legal
formalities might necessitate an undue disclosure as to his parentage
and the bigamy of which his mother had been a victim. He refused
absolutely to be married in Paris. He said: "You're English and I'm
English, and the proper place for us to be married is England." There
were good counter-arguments, but he would not have them. Curiously, at
this very period, news came from his stepfather of his father's death in
America. He kept it to himself. Again, on the night itself of their
marriage, he had said to her: "_Now give me that revolver you've got_."
At her protesting refusal he had said: "My wife is not going about with
any revolver. Not if I know it!" He was playful but determined. He
startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours. On the other hand he
had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and
had never seen it. Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the
mysterious woman kept it.

His lips were close to hers, and his eyes to her eyes. Most persons
called her eyes golden, but to him they were just yellow. They had an
infinitesimal cast, to which nobody ever referred. They were voluptuous
eyes. He examined her face. She was still young; but the fine impressive
imprint of existence was upon her features, and the insipid freshness
had departed. She blinked, acquiescent. Her eyes changed, melting. He
could almost see into her brain, and watch there the impulse of
repentance for an unreasonable caprice, and the intense resolve to think
in the future only of her husband's welfare. She was like that.... She
could be an angel.... He knew that he was hard. He guessed that he might
be inordinately hard He would bear people down. Why had he not been
touched by her helpless condi