did he come?'

'Curious; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and appears to have
outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it. But if that woman thinks
of intimidating me now--!' His eyes brightened; he had sprung from
evasions. 'Living in flagrant sin, she says: you and I! She will not
have it; warns me. Heard this day at noon of company at Lakelands.
Jarniman off at once. Are to live in obscurity;--you and I! if together!
Dictates from her death-bed-I suppose her death-bed.'

'Dearest,' Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, 'may we not think
that she may be right?'

'An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she
is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs for blood, hanging-on to blast
the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days,
calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I
lay--see myself lying! wasting! Think what you can good of her, by all
means! From her bed! despatches that Jarniman to me from her bedside,
with the word, that she cannot in her conscience allow--what imposition
was it I practised?... flagrant sin?--it would have been an infinitely
viler.... She is the cause of suffering enough: I bear no more from her;
I've come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands: she has taken one of
her hatreds to the place. She might have written, might have sent me a
gentleman, privately. No: it must be done in dramatic style-for effect:
her confidential--lawyer?--doctor?--butler! Perhaps to frighten me:--the
boy she knew, and--poor soul! I don't mean to abuse her: but such
conduct as this is downright brutal. I laugh at it, I snap my fingers.
I can afford to despise it. Only I do say it deserves to be called
abominable.'

'Victor, has she used a threat?'

'Am I brought to listen to any of her threats!--Funny thing, I 'm
certain that woman never can think of me except as the boy she knew. I
saw her first when she was first a widow. She would keep talking to me
of the seductions of the metropolis--kept informing me I was a young
man... shaking her head. I 've told you. She--well, I know we are
mixtures, women as well as men. I can, I hope, grant the same--I believe
I can--allowances to women as to men; we are poor creatures, all of
using one sense: though I won't give Colney his footing; there's a
better way of reading us. I hold fast to Nature. No violation of Nature,
my good Colney! We can live the lives of noble creatures; and I say that
happines