re man and wife, aren't we?"

I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was becoming
cold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an outrage on my
natural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence against my dignity
as a woman.

It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing. The
rain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the rocks. I
wanted to fly, but I felt caged--morally and physically caged.

My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down the
sitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile he
approached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:

"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long and
exhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up early."

Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the large
bedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to undress and get
into bed, and after that he said something about waiting. Then he closed
the door softly and I was alone.

THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

There was a fire in the bedroom and I sat down in front of it. Many
forces were warring within me. I was trying to fix my thoughts and found
it difficult to do so.

Some time passed. My husband's man came in with the noiseless step of
all such persons, opened one of the portmanteaux and laid out his
master's combs and brushes on the dressing table and his sleeping suit
on the bed. A maid of the hotel followed him, and taking my own sleeping
things out of the top tray of my trunk she laid them out beside my
husband's.

"Good-night, my lady," they said in their low voices as they went out on
tiptoe.

I hardly heard them. My mind, at first numb, was now going at lightning
speed. Brought face to face for the first time with one of the greatest
facts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I had not reckoned with
it before.

I had not even thought of it. My whole soul had been so much occupied
with one great spiritual issue--that I did not love my husband (as I
understood love), that my husband did not love me--that I had never once
plainly confronted, even in my own mind, the physical fact that is the
first condition of matrimony, and nobody had mentioned it to me or even
hinted at it.

I could not plead that I did not know of this condition. I was young but
I was not a child. I had been brought up in a convent, but a convent is
not a nursery. Then why had I not thought o