should think. You have lost all
love for me--there's the misery.'

Monica could not reply. That word 'love' had grown a weariness to her
upon his lips. She did not love him; could not pretend to love him.
Every day the distance between them widened, and when he took her in
his arms she had to struggle with a sense of shrinking, of disgust. The
union was unnatural; she felt herself constrained by a hateful force
when he called upon her for the show of wifely tenderness. Yet how was
she to utter this? The moment such a truth had passed her lips she must
leave him. To declare that no trace of love remained in her heart, and
still to live with him--that was impossible! The dark foresight of a
necessity of parting from him corresponded in her to those lurid
visions which at times shook Widdowson with a horrible temptation.

'You don't love me,' he continued in harsh, choking tones. 'You wish to
be my _friend_. That's how you try to compensate me for the loss of
your love.'

He laughed with bitterness.

'When you say that,' Monica answered, 'do you ever ask yourself whether
you try to make me love you? Scenes like this are ruining my health. I
have come to dread your talk. I have almost forgotten the sound of your
voice when it isn't either angry or complaining.'

Widdowson walked about the room, and a deep moan escaped him.

'That is why I have asked you to go away from here, Monica. We must
have a new home if our life is to begin anew.'

'I have no faith in mere change of place. You would be the same man. If
you cannot command your senseless jealousy here, you never would
anywhere else.'

He made an effort to say something; seemed to abandon it; again tried,
and spoke in a thick, unnatural voice.

'Can you honestly repeat to me what Barfoot was saying to-day, when you
were on the seat together?'

Monica's eyes flashed.

'I could; every word. But I shall not try to do so.'

'Not if I beseech you to, Monica? To put my mind at rest--'

'No. When I tell you that you might have heard every syllable, I have
said all that I shall.'

It mortified him profoundly that he should have been driven to make so
humiliating a request. He threw himself into a chair and hid his face,
sitting thus for a long time in the hope that Monica would be moved to
compassion. But when she rose it was only to retire for the night. And
with wretchedness in her heart, because she must needs go to the same
chamber in which her husband woul