as it we said? I have a vivid sense of declaring not once only but
several times that Mary and I were husband and wife "in the sight of
God." I was full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine. I
must have spoken to Justin at times as if he had come merely to confirm
my view of the long dispute there had been between us. For a while my
mind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay between him
and Mary, that I was in some way an interloper. It seemed to me there
was nothing for it now but that Mary should stand by my side and face
Justin with the world behind him. I remember my confused sense that
presently she and I would have to go straight out of Martens. And she
was wearing a tea-gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers.
Any packing, any change of clothing, struck me as an incredible
anti-climax. I had visions of our going forth, hand in hand. Outside was
the soughing of a coming storm, a chill wind drove a tumult of leaves
along the terrace, the door slammed and yawned open again, and then came
the rain. Justin, I remember, still talking, closed the door. I tried to
think how I could get to the station five miles away, and then what we
could do in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to an
hotel--without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand that she
should come with me, and come now.

And then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of realization that she did
not intend to come now, and that Justin was resolved she should not do
so. After the first shock of finding herself discovered she had stood
pale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes rather on him than on
me. Her hands, I think, were behind her upon the edge of the writing
flap, and she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful alert
expression of one who faces an unanticipated but by no means
overwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me. "But I do not want to
come with you," she said. "I have told you I do not want to come with
you." All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she should do with
Justin. "You must send him away," he was saying. "It's an abominable
thing. It must stop. How can you dream it should go on?"

"But you said when you married me I should be free, I should own myself!
You gave me this house----"

"What! To disgrace myself!"

I was moved to intervene.

"You must choose between us, Mary," I cried. "It is impossible you
should stay here! You cannot stay here."

She