What a liar
you've been!"

"I wan' my wife," he muttered, quietened a little by Mrs. King's voice.
"'Sall very well, ole girl."

"Be quiet, Louis, or I'll shake your head off!" she said, quietly. He
stared at her, and cowered down in the bed. She watched him for a
moment. Then she spoke softly.

"Now you're going to sleep--you're going to put your head down on
Marcella's shoulder and go to sleep. You're quite safe with Marcella."

He shivered a little, and then lay still. She pinched out the candle
with fingers that did not feel the flame.

For a whole fortnight he drank steadily, using remarkable cleverness in
getting money. He joined forces with Mr. King: for the first week they
obtained money from some unknown source and only came home at night when
they were put out of the hotels at closing time, and even then they
brought whisky or gin--which was much cheaper--home with them. Marcella
had not known there were distinctions in alcohol; she found during that
fortnight that whisky made him mad and then terrified, gin made him
horribly disgusting and beer made him simply silly and very sick. The
second week Louis tricked and lied to Marcella, using any excuse to get
her out of the room. At the end of three days he had sold everything he
possessed except his least reputable suit, which he had to keep to wear.
The last day of the fortnight he came home without the waistcoat:
whether he had sold that, or given it away in maudlin generosity, or
lost it in some fantastic fashion she could never gather. He had not
taken any of her money. On Mrs. King's advice she had gone up on the
roof one day, crept along three other roofs and hidden it in a gully.

"You've got to be up to all the dodges," said Mrs. King.

"I loathe dodges," said Marcella.

She got down to the depths in this fortnight. Louis scarcely slept at
all, nor did she. Soothing him at night sickened her beyond endurance;
she read the New Testament much during the day while he was away, and
the story of the Grail. One day St. Paul said something to her that
brought her up sharp.

"Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me
nothing; love suffereth long, and is kind: love--beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

"I don't believe I love him. I don't believe I ever loved him. That
madness wasn't love, or it would have endured all things," she said.
Then Parsifal told her that without love