ow was the moment to assert herself. She made the statement again. He
got up from his chair.

"And you'd better mend your manners," she continued, "for you'd find it
awkward if I stopped drawing cheques."

She was no reader of character, but she quickly became alarmed. As she
said to Perfetta afterwards, "None of his clothes seemed to fit--too
big in one place, too small in another." His figure rather than his face
altered, the shoulders falling forward till his coat wrinkled across the
back and pulled away from his wrists. He seemed all arms. He edged round
the table to where she was sitting, and she sprang away and held the
chair between them, too frightened to speak or to move. He looked at her
with round, expressionless eyes, and slowly stretched out his left hand.

Perfetta was heard coming up from the kitchen. It seemed to wake him up,
and he turned away and went to his room without a word.

"What has happened?" cried Lilia, nearly fainting. "He is ill--ill."

Perfetta looked suspicious when she heard the account. "What did you say
to him?" She crossed herself.

"Hardly anything," said Lilia and crossed herself also. Thus did the two
women pay homage to their outraged male.

It was clear to Lilia at last that Gino had married her for money. But
he had frightened her too much to leave any place for contempt. His
return was terrifying, for he was frightened too, imploring her pardon,
lying at her feet, embracing her, murmuring "It was not I," striving to
define things which he did not understand. He stopped in the house
for three days, positively ill with physical collapse. But for all his
suffering he had tamed her, and she never threatened to cut off supplies
again.

Perhaps he kept her even closer than convention demanded. But he was
very young, and he could not bear it to be said of him that he did
not know how to treat a lady--or to manage a wife. And his own social
position was uncertain. Even in England a dentist is a troublesome
creature, whom careful people find difficult to class. He hovers between
the professions and the trades; he may be only a little lower than the
doctors, or he may be down among the chemists, or even beneath them. The
son of the Italian dentist felt this too. For himself nothing mattered;
he made friends with the people he liked, for he was that glorious
invariable creature, a man. But his wife should visit nowhere rather
than visit wrongly: seclusion was both decent and safe.