for perhaps two minutes, and when he spoke again his voice
was hoarse. He reverted to a former formula. "Look here," he said, and
cleared his throat. "I don't know whether you think I'm going to
stand this, but I'm not."

He looked at her. She sat staring in front of her, making no attempt
to cope with disaster.

"When I say I'm not going to stand it," explained Lewisham, "I don't
mean having a row or anything of that sort. One can quarrel and be
disappointed over--other things--and still go on. But this is a
different thing altogether.

"Of all dreams and illusions!... Think what I have lost in this
accursed marriage. And _now_ ... You don't understand--you won't
understand."

"Nor you," said Ethel, weeping but neither looking at him nor moving
her hands from her lap where they lay helplessly. "_You_ don't
understand."

"I'm beginning to."

He sat in silence gathering force. "In one year," he said, "all my
hopes, all my ambitions have gone. I know I have been cross and
irritable--I know that. I've been pulled two ways. But ... I bought
you these roses."

She looked at the roses, and then at his white face, made an
imperceptible movement towards him, and became impassive again.

"I do think one thing. I have found out you are shallow, you don't
think, you can't feel things that I think and feel. I have been
getting over that. But I did think you were loyal--"

"I _am_ loyal," she cried.

"And you think--Bah!--you poke my roses under the table!"

Another portentous silence. Ethel stirred and he turned his eyes to
watch what she was about to do. She produced her handkerchief and
began to wipe her dry eyes rapidly, first one and then the other. Then
she began sobbing. "I'm ... as loyal as you ... anyhow," she said.

For a moment Lewisham was aghast. Then he perceived he must ignore
that argument.

"I would have stood it--I would have stood anything if you had been
loyal--if I could have been sure of you. I am a fool, I know, but I
would have stood the interruption of my work, the loss of any hope of
a Career, if I had been sure you were loyal. I ... I cared for you a
great deal."

He stopped. He had suddenly perceived the pathetic. He took refuge in
anger.

"And you have deceived me! How long, how much, I don't care. You have
deceived me. And I tell you"--he began to gesticulate--"I'm not so
much your slave and fool as to stand that! No woman shall make me
_that_ sort of fool, whatever else--So far a