thought it was my duty to
do, should have been perverted by his gross and vulgar mind into
overtures to the animal man in him--this was more than I could bear. I
felt the tears gushing to my eyes, but I kept them back, for my
self-pity was not so strong as my wrath.

I rose this time without being aware of his resistance.

"Let me go to bed," I said.

"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . ."

"Let me go to bed," I said again, and at the next moment I stepped into
my room.

He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what was
taking place behind me.

My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first of
amazement and then of rage.

"I can't understand you," he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There isn't a
man in the world who could." After that he strode into his own bedroom
and clashed the door after him.

"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again.

It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was no use
trying.

FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to read the
deep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came to pass that
the only result of this incident was to make me sure that if we remained
in London much longer my husband would go back to the other woman, and
to say why (seeing that I did not love him) I should have become
feverishly anxious to remove him from the range of this temptation.

Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father saying I
had been unwell and begging him to use his influence with my husband to
set out on the Egyptian trip without further delay.

My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the lines of my
letter I do not know; what he said was this--

"Daughter--Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling him to
quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there already. And
while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as much as you
please, for where it is a matter of money you must never let nobody
walk over you.

Yours--&c."

The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Within
twenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about trains
and berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way to
Marseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port Said.

Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with a
passage-way between them. This admitted of entire