d with savage contumely.
He had just loosed his hold of her, and she was upright again before
him, her eyes flashing defiance, though every muscle in her frame
quivered. 'When did your lies begin? Was it when you told me you had
been to hear Miss Barfoot's lecture, and never went there at all?'

He aimed the charge at a venture, and her face told him that his
suspicion had been grounded.

'For how many weeks, for how many months, have you been dishonouring me
and yourself?'

'I am not guilty of what you believe, but I shan't try to defend
myself. Thank Heaven, this is the end of everything between us! Charge
me with what you like. I am going away from you, and I hope we may
never meet again.'

'Yes, you are going--no doubt of that. But not before you have answered
my questions. Whether with lies or not doesn't matter much. You shall
give your own account of what you have been doing.'

Both panting as if after some supreme effort of their physical force,
they stood and looked at each other. Each to the other's eyes was
incredibly transformed. Monica could not have imagined such brutal
ferocity in her husband's face, and she herself had a wild recklessness
in her eyes, a scorn and abhorrence in all the lines of her
countenance, which made Widdowson feel as if a stranger were before him.

'I shall answer no question whatever,' Monica replied. 'All I want is
to leave your house, and never see you again.'

He regretted what he had done. The result of the first day's espionage
being a piece of evidence so incomplete, he had hoped to command
himself until more solid proof of his wife's guilt were forthcoming.
But jealousy was too strong for such prudence, and the sight of Monica
as she uttered her falsehood made a mere madman of him. Predisposed to
believe a story of this kind, he could not reason as he might have done
if fear of Barfoot had never entered his thoughts. The whole course of
dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica's earliest meetings
with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between the impulse to cast off his
wife with every circumstance of public shame, and the piteous desire to
arrest her on her path of destruction, he rushed into a middle course,
compatible with neither of these intentions. If at this stage he chose
to tell Monica what had come to his knowledge, it should have been done
with the sternest calm, with dignity capable of shaming her guilt. As
it was, he had spoilt his chances in every