g to you--to ask you a
question."

He made a mock sentimental gesture.

"To ask me to spare my wife, to 'remember that she is the mother of my
child'?"

She passed over that also.

"To ask you if there is no possible way in which all this unhappiness
can be ended decently."

"The only decent way of ending it would be that there should be no
further interference. Let Rosalie supply the decency by showing me the
consideration due from a wife to her husband. The place has been put in
order. It was not for my benefit, and I have no money to keep it up. Let
Rosalie be provided with means to do it."

As he spoke the words he realised that he had opened a way for
embarrassing comment. He expected her to remind him that Rosalie had not
come to him without money. But she said nothing about the matter. She
never said the things he expected to hear.

"You do not want Rosalie for your wife," she went on "but you could
treat her courteously without loving her. You could allow her the
privileges other men's wives are allowed. You need not separate her from
her family. You could allow her father and mother to come to her and
leave her free to go to them sometimes. Will you not agree to that? Will
you not let her live peaceably in her own simple way? She is very gentle
and humble and would ask nothing more."

"She is a fool!" he exclaimed furiously. "A fool! She will stay where
she is and do as I tell her."

"You knew what she was when you married her. She was simple and girlish
and pretended to be nothing she was not. You chose to marry her and take
her from the people who loved her. You broke her spirit and her heart.
You would have killed her if I had not come in time to prevent it."

"I will kill her yet if you leave her," his folly made him say.

"You are talking like a feudal lord holding the power of life and death
in his hands," she said. "Power like that is ancient history. You can
hurt no one who has friends--without being punished."

It was the old story. She filled him with the desire to shake or disturb
her at any cost, and he did his utmost. If she was proposing to make
terms with him, he would show her whether he would accept them or not.
He let her hear all he had said to himself in his worst moments--all
that he had argued concerning what she and her people would do, and
what his own actions would be--all his intention to make them pay the
uttermost farthing in humiliation if he could not frustrate them.