nce broken the feast.

She looked up at him with that submission in her glance which belonged
to her state of self-reproof; but the subtle change in his face and
manner arrested her speech. For a few moments they remained silent,
looking at each other.

Tito himself felt that a crisis was come in his married life. The
husband's determination to mastery, which lay deep below all blandness
and beseechingness, had risen permanently to the surface now, and seemed
to alter his face, as a face is altered by a hidden muscular tension
with which a man is secretly throttling or stamping out the life from
something feeble, yet dangerous.

"Romola," he began, in the cool liquid tone that made her shiver, "it is
time that we should understand each other." He paused.

"That is what I most desire, Tito," she said, faintly. Her sweet pale
face; with all its anger gone and nothing but the timidity of self-doubt
in it, seemed to give a marked predominance to her husband's dark
strength.

"You took a step this morning," Tito went on, "which you must now
yourself perceive to have been useless--which exposed you to remark and
may involve me in serious practical difficulties."

"I acknowledge that I was too hasty; I am sorry for any injustice I may
have done you." Romola spoke these words in a fuller and firmer tone;
Tito, she hoped, would look less hard when she had expressed her regret,
and then she could say other things.

"I wish you once for all to understand," he said, without any change of
voice, "that such collisions are incompatible with our position as
husband and wife. I wish you to reflect on the mode in which you were
led to that step, that the process may not he repeated."

"That depends chiefly on you, Tito," said Romola, taking fire slightly.
It was not at all what she had thought of saying, but we see a very
little way before us in mutual speech.

"You would say, I suppose," answered Tito, "that nothing is to occur in
future which can excite your unreasonable suspicions. You were frank
enough to say last night that you have no belief in me. I am not
surprised at any exaggerated conclusion you may draw from slight
premises, but I wish to point out to you what is likely to be the fruit
of your making such exaggerated conclusions a ground for interfering in
affairs of which you are ignorant. Your attention is thoroughly awake
to what I am saying?"

He paused for a reply.

"Yes," said Romola, flushing in