know how I think of you. It is I who am your servant, your slave.'

'Oh, I can't believe that!' She pressed her handkerchief to her cheeks,
and laughed unnaturally. 'Such words don't mean anything. It is you who
forbid and allow and command, and--'

'I will never again use such words. Only convince me that you love me
as much as ever.'

'It is so miserable to begin quarrelling--'

'Never again! Say you love me! Put your arms round my neck--press
closer to me--'

She kissed his cheek, but did not utter a word.

'You can't say that you love me?'

'I think I am always showing it. Do get ready for dinner now; it's past
seven. Oh, how foolish you have been!'

Of course their talk lasted half through the night. Monica held with
remarkable firmness to the position she had taken; a much older woman
might have envied her steadfast yet quite rational assertion of the
right to live a life of her Own apart from that imposed upon her by the
duties of wedlock. A great deal of this spirit and the utterance it
found was traceable to her association with the women whom Widdowson so
deeply suspected; prior to her sojourn in Rutland Street she could not
even have made clear to herself the demands which she now very clearly
formulated. Believing that she had learnt nothing from them, and till
of late instinctively opposing the doctrines held by Miss Barfoot and
Rhoda Nunn, Monica in truth owed the sole bit of real education she had
ever received to those few weeks of attendance in Great Portland
Street. Circumstances were now proving how apt a pupil she had been,
even against her will. Marriage, as is always the case with women
capable of development, made for her a new heaven and a new earth;
perhaps on no single subject did she now think as on the morning of her
wedding-day.

'You must either trust me completely,' she said, 'or not at all. If you
can't and won't trust me, how can I possibly love you?'

'Am I never to advise?' asked her husband, baffled, and even awed, by
this extraordinary revelation of a woman he had supposed himself to
know thoroughly.

'Oh, that's a very different thing from forbidding and commanding!' she
laughed. 'There was that novel this morning. Of course I know as well
as you do that "Guy Mannering" is better; but that doesn't say I am not
to form my opinion of other books. You mustn't be afraid to leave me
the same freedom you have yourself.'

The result of it all was that Widdowson felt his pass