strained. I lifted
her up in the bed, put my arms round her, and made her lean against me.
I was strangely moved.

"I frightened you! How can that be?" I said, trying to control a passion
of mingled love and anger that filled my breast. "You know that I love
you. You must know that. In all our short married life have I ever been
even momentarily unkind to you? Let us be frank with one another. Our
lives have changed lately. One of us has altered. You cannot say that it
is I."

She only continued to sob bitterly in my arms. I held her closer.

"Let us be frank with one another," I went on. "For God's sake let us
have no barriers between us. Margot, look into my eyes and tell me--are
you growing tired of me?"

She turned her head away, but I spoke more sternly:

"You shall be truthful. I will have no more subterfuge. Look me in the
face. You did love me once?"

"Yes, yes," she whispered in a choked voice.

"What have I done, then, to alienate you? Have I ever hurt you, ever
shown a lack of sympathy, ever neglected you?"

"Never--never."

"Yet you have changed to me since--since----" I paused a moment, trying
to recall when I had first noticed her altered demeanour.

She interrupted me.

"It has all come upon me in this house," she sobbed. "Oh! what is it?
What does it all mean? If I could understand a little--only a little--it
would not be so bad. But this nightmare, this thing that seems such a
madness of the intellect----"

Her voice broke and ceased. Her tears burst forth afresh. Such mingled
fear, passion, and a sort of strange latent irritation, I had never seen
before.

"It is a madness indeed," I said, and a sense almost of outrage made my
voice hard and cold. "I have not deserved such treatment at your hands."

"I will not yield to it," she said, with a sort of desperation, suddenly
throwing her arms around me. "I will not--I will not!"

I was strangely puzzled. I was torn with conflicting feelings. Love and
anger grappled at my heart. But I only held her, and did not speak until
she grew obviously calmer. The paroxysm seemed passing away. Then I
said:

"I cannot understand."

"Nor I," she answered, with a directness that had been foreign to her
of late, but that was part and parcel of her real, beautiful nature. "I
cannot understand. I only know there is a change in me, or in you to
me, and that I cannot help it, or that I have not been able to help it.
Sometimes I feel--do not be angry, I