was doing I had
put up both hands to push him off.

"Come, come, this is going too far," he said, in a tone that was half
playful, half serious. "It was all very well in the automobile; but
here, in your own rooms, you know. . . ."

He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meant
that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charming
for him.

I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, and
crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before the
fire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, and
then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders and
kissed my neck.

A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of
indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with the
look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud and
insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much as
contemplated resistance.

"Well, this is funny," he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll see!"

A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked for
dinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering excitedly by
this time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of other
people gave me.

While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of the
day. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given us "the
sermon" at the wedding breakfast--he had evidently forgotten that he had
seen the Father before.

I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a saint if
ever there was one.

"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not synonymous with
simpleton, though."

Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony." By
holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused more
misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural
adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair by
marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and a
scoundrel.

I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of all
this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife. I am
sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every word
he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepen
into horror.

My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with my
handkerchief. I was feeling more frighte