et.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw Annette holding the letter
rigidly; her eyes moved from side to side under her darkened lashes and
frowning darkened eyebrows. She dropped the letter, gave a little
shiver, smiled, and said:

"Dirrty!"

"I quite agree," said Soames; "degrading. Is it true?"

A tooth fastened on her red lower lip. "And what if it were?"

She was brazen!

"Is that all you have to say?"

"No."

"Well, speak out!"

"What is the good of talking?"

Soames said icily: "So you admit it?"

"I admit nothing. You are a fool to ask. A man like you should not ask.
It is dangerous."

Soames made a tour of the room, to subdue his rising anger.

"Do you remember," he said, halting in front of her, "what you were
when I married you? Working at accounts in a restaurant."

"Do you remember that I was not half your age?"

Soames broke off the hard encounter of their eyes, and went back to the
David Cox.

"I am not going to bandy words. I require you to give up
this--friendship. I think of the matter entirely as it affects Fleur."

"Ah!--Fleur!"

"Yes," said Soames stubbornly; "Fleur. She is your child as well as
mine."

"It is kind to admit that!"

"Are you going to do what I say?"

"I refuse to tell you."

"Then I must make you."

Annette smiled.

"No, Soames," she said. "You are helpless. Do not say things that you
will regret."

Anger swelled the veins on his forehead. He opened his mouth to vent
that emotion, and--could not. Annette went on:

"There shall be no more such letters, I promise you. That is enough."

Soames writhed. He had a sense of being treated like a child by this
woman who had deserved he did not know what.

"When two people have married, and lived like us, Soames, they had
better be quiet about each other. There are things one does not drag up
into the light for people to laugh at. You will be quiet, then; not for
my sake--for your own. You are getting old; I am not, yet. You have
made me ver-ry practical." Soames, who had passed through all the
sensations of being choked, repeated dully:

"I require you to give up this friendship."

"And if I do not?"

"Then--then I will cut you out of my Will."

Somehow it did not seem to meet the case. Annette laughed.

"You will live a long time, Soames."

"You--you are a bad woman," said Soames suddenly.

Annette shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not think so. Living with you has killed things in me, it is
tru