."

To his amazement she wrung her hands hopelessly, and looked at him with
tragic eyes.

"Can't you see, you utter idiot, that that's just all wrong? It's no use
doing things for someone else! You've got to do them for yourself!
What's the good of it? Do you think I want to make you a flabby thing
hanging on to my apron strings all the time? You've got drunk on whisky
in the past. Louis, I'm simply not going to have you getting drunk on
me! What on earth's the use of conquering drink hunger and getting
woman-hunger? It's only another--what you call neurosis, and what I call
kink! If that's all the use my love and the whole wicked struggle is
going to be, I might as well give up at once?"

He caught her wet face between his hands. In the light of the candle he
looked at her earnestly.

"If, at the end of all this, I've to go on being a prop to you, we need
not go on trying any more. Props are rotten and cowardly, whether they
are props of love or not. I want to see you grow so that, if I go out of
life, you'll stand up straight with your head in the sun and the wind.
Not propped, my dear! Father was all wrong, I think now. When he'd
killed the whisky he leaned on a great big man God outside him, a shield
and defence. Can't you see that we've to stand up alone without God or
anything except ourselves? Can't you see that unless our strength is in
ourselves we'll never stand? That's what I'm trying to do--and I know
how hard it is."

"You? You're not a drunkard, Marcella," he said.

She smiled a little as she looked at him.

"You know, Louis, you're an awful duffer!" she said, and turned away.
But he lifted her over the wet floor into bed and, as he blew out the
candle, told the mosquitoes to go to hell, and kissed her face and her
hands, he thought he had effectually stilled her queer ethical
doubtings. And she felt very much alone and unguided, and not at all
able to stand up straight without a prop as she had preached to him.

For the next few days Louis was depressed and restless. She did not
understand him. She was not yet aware that his hunger came on in
periodic attacks and thought that she must have hurt him in some way to
make him so wretched. She tried to be especially gentle to him, but he
was rather difficult to please. He developed a habit of womanish, almost
shrewish, nagging that astounded her; he grumbled at his food, he
grumbled at the discomforts of living in one room; he made her feel
cheap whe