thout your telling me. Your
husband has made a scene, and overborne you, and is trying to force you
back into the hen-yard of domestic virtue. . . ." He changed his manner. He
said in a low, beautiful, persuasive voice, his eyes deeply on her, sure
of himself with that sureness that no one had ever resisted, "But you
can never do that now, you bird-of-paradise! You would only . . ."

He was brought up short by a change in her. This time his words had had
the power to move her face from the quiet he hated. It was suddenly
alive with a strong emotion. But what emotion? He could not guess at its
meaning, nor why she should step quickly away, shaking his hands from
her shoulders, and looking at him sadly, her eyebrows drawn up as if in
pain. He hung uncertain, daunted by his inability to read her face,
feeling for the first time an instantly dismissed doubt of his mastery
over her.

She said very quickly, with the accent and manner of one who, shocked
and pitying, tries to save another from going on with an involuntary
disclosure in him of something shaming and unworthy.

"No, oh no! Not that. Neale has done nothing . . . said nothing . . .
except as he always has, to leave me quite free, all free."

As he was silent for a moment, watchful, not especially moved by her
words, which seemed to him unimportant, but alarmed by some special
significance which they seemed to have for her, she went on with the
single, only note of blame or reproach which was to come into her voice.
"Oh, how _could_ you think that?" she said to him, with a deep quavering
disappointment, as though she were ashamed of him.

He knew that he was the cause of the disappointment, although he could
not imagine why, and he regretted having made a false move; but he was
not deeply concerned by this passage. He did not see how it could have
any importance, or touch what lay at issue between them. These were all
womanish, up-in-the-air passes and parries. He had only not yet found
his opening.

He flung his head back impatiently. "If it is not that, what is it?" he
demanded. "A return of hide-bound scruples about the children? You know
that they must live their own lives, not yours, and that anything that
gives you greater richness and power makes you a better mother."

"Oh yes, I know that," she answered. "I have thought of that, myself."

But he had a baffled feeling that this was not at all the admission the
words would make it seem.

His impatien