'Oh, that word Duty!'

Pained unutterably, Widdowson bent forward and took her hand. He spoke
in a tone of the gravest but softest rebuke. She was giving
entertainment to thoughts that would lead her who knew whither, that
would undermine her happiness, would end by making both of them
miserable. He besought her to put all such monstrous speculations out
of her mind.

'Dear, good little wife! Do be guided by your husband. He is older than
you, darling, and has seen so much more of the world.'

'I haven't said anything dreadful, dear. My thoughts don't come from
other people; they rise naturally in my own head.'

'Now, what do you really want? You say you can't live as we were doing.
What change would you make?'

'I should like to make more friends, and to see them often. I want to
hear people talk, and know what is going on round about me. And to read
a different kind of books; books that would really amuse me, and give
me something I could think about with pleasure. Life will be a burden
to me before long if I don't have more freedom.'

'Freedom?'

'Yes, I don't think there's any harm in saying that.'

'Freedom?' He glared at her. 'I shall begin to think that you wish you
had never married me.'

'I should only wish that if I were made to feel that you shut me up in
a house and couldn't trust me to go where I chose. Suppose the thought
took you that you would go and walk about the City some afternoon, and
you wished to go alone, just to be more at ease, should I have a right
to forbid you, or grumble at you? And yet you are very dissatisfied if
I wish to go anywhere alone.'

'But here's the old confusion. I am a man; you are a woman.'

'I can't see that that makes any difference. A woman ought to go about
just as freely as a man. I don't think it's just. When I have done my
work at home I think I ought to be every bit as free as you are--every
bit as free. And I'm sure, Edmund, that love needs freedom if it is to
remain love in truth.'

He looked at her keenly.

'That's a dreadful thing for you to say. So, if I disapprove of your
becoming the kind of woman that acknowledges no law, you will cease to
love me?'

'What law do you mean?'

'Why, the natural law that points out a woman's place, and'--he added,
with shaken voice--'commands her to follow her husband's guidance.'

'Now you are angry. We mustn't talk about it any more just now.'

She rose and poured out a glass of water. Her hand trembled a