wfully. And now I
hope you're soon going to cut the cake?"

And Tristram wondered why her mutinous mouth had quivered and her eyes
become full of mist. She was thinking of her own little brother, far
away, who did not even know that there would be any cake.

And so, eventually, they had passed through the shower of rice and
slippers and were at last alone in the motorcar again; and once more
she shrank into her corner and did not speak, and he waited patiently
until they should be in the train.

But once there, in the reserved saloon, when the obsequious guard had
finally shut the door from waving friends and last hand shakes, and they
slowly steamed out of the station, he came over and sat down beside her
and tenderly took her little gray-gloved hand.

But she drew it away from him, and moved further off, before he could
even speak.

"Zara!" he said pleadingly.

Then she looked intensely fierce.

"Can you not let me be quiet for a moment?" she hissed. "I am tired
out."

And he saw that she was trembling, and, though he was very much in love
and maddeningly exasperated with everything, he let her rest, and even
settled her cushion for her, silently, and took a paper and sat in an
armchair near, and pretended to read.

And Zara stared out of the window, her heart beating in her throat. For
she knew this was only a delay because, as her uncle had once said, the
English nobility as a race were great gentlemen--and this one in
particular--and because of that he would not be likely to make a scene
in the train; but they would arrive at the hotel presently, and there
was dinner to be got through, alone with him, and then--the afterwards.
And as she thought of this her very lips grew white.

The hideous, hideous hatefulness of men! Visions of moments of her first
wedding journey with Ladislaus came back to her. He had not shown her
any consideration for five minutes in his life.

Everything in her nature was up in arms. She could not be just; with her
belief in his baseness it seemed to her that here was this man--her
husband--whom she had seen but four times in her life, and he was not
content with the honest bargain which he perfectly understood; not
content with her fortune and her willingness to adorn his house, but he
must perforce allow his revolting senses to be aroused, he must desire
to caress her, just because she was a woman--and fair--and the law would
give him the right because she was his wife.

B