ew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can no
longer keep up the farce of being your wife."

"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce is
exactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever since the
day we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you have only
yourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife is no company
for anybody but the saints and angels?"

His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the thought
that after all in his own gross way my husband had something to say for
himself.

Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without another
word. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face must have
been more powerful than my speech, for after a few seconds in which he
went on saying in his drawling way that I had been no wife to him, and
if anything had happened I had brought it on myself, he stopped, and
neither of us spoke for a moment.

Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should faint, I
turned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low, perhaps in
mockery, as I passed out.

When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost dropped, and
so cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot bottles to my
feet.

And then the tears came and I cried like a child.

FIFTIETH CHAPTER

I was far from well next morning and Price wished to keep me in bed, but
I got up immediately when I heard that my husband was talking of
returning to London.

Our journey was quite uneventful. We three sat together in the railway
carriage and in the private cabin on the steamer, with no other company
than Bimbo, my husband's terrier, and Prue, Alma's Pekinese spaniel.

Although he made no apology for his conduct of the day before my husband
was quiet and conciliatory, and being sober he looked almost afraid, as
if telling himself that he might have to meet my father soon--the one
man in the world of whom he seemed to stand in fear.

Alma looked equally frightened, but she carried off her nervousness with
a great show of affection, saying she was sorry I was feeling "badly,"
that France and the South did not agree with me, and that I should be
ever so much better when I was "way up north."

We put up at a well-known hotel near Trafalgar Square, the same that in
our girlhood had been the subject of Alma's dreams of future bliss, and
I could not help observing that while my husband was selec