Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of his left hand, and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his lips, he told me I was mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a scene like this. He thought he could spend his time better. I was equally mistaken if I imagined that he had desired our marriage at all. Something quite different might have happened if he could have afforded to please himself.

He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not thought of that, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a person like my father for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and my cousins--ugh!

The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to make all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics!

Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the muss and mummery of the Church!

It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my confessor.

Did any rational man want another man to come between him and his wife--knowing all he did and said, and everything about him?

I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral of it was that if I had been allowed to marry without being instructed in the first conditions of married life my husband had suffered a gross and shocking injustice.

The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating and degrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view, and when I remembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked to me like this, and that he could claim rights in me, to-night, to-morrow, as long as I lived, until death parted us, a wild impulse of impotent anger at everybody and everything made me drop my head on to the table and burst into tears.

My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything. Taking my crying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his arms round my shoulders again and renewed his fondling.

"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes," he said. "The people of the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be all sorts of ridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common people you are a different pair of shoes altogether."

He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my shuddering) and saying:

"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've kept you in ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little woman, we'll soon repair that."

I could bear no more. I _must_ speak and I did. Leaping up and facing round on him I told him my side of the story--how I had been married against my will, and had not wanted him any more than he had wanted me; how all my objections had been overruled, all my compunctions borne down; how everybody had been in a conspiracy to compel me, and I had been bought and sold like a slave.

"But you can't go any farther than that," I said. "Between you, you have forced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey you, because I won't."

I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had finished it was ashen-white.

"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more he tramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying to account to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me again and said, in the tone of one who thought he was making peace:

"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have some other attachment--that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think I'm blaming you. I may be in the same case myself for all you know to the contrary. But circumstances have been too strong for us and here we are. Well, we're in it, and we've got to make the best of it and why shouldn't we? Lots of people in my class are in the same position, and yet they get along all right. Why can't we do the same? I'll not be too particular. Neither will you. For the rest of our lives let each of us go his and her own way. But that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our wedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm... .

Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look here, we won't expect too much affection from each other--but let's stop this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. Come, now."

Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and I cried:

"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"

There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen on my husband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride had expected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a moment, recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot blood run cold, he said:

"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as such you belong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I will."

The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming towards me with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils fixed. In the drunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally.

But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse. I wanted to strike him on the face.

"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the window," I said.

"No fear of that," he said, catching me quickly in his arms.

"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house down," I cried.

That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the next moment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without resistance on my husband's part I entered the little bedroom to the left and locked the door behind me.

THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Some further time passed. I sat by the fireless grate with my chin in my hand. If the storm outside was still raging I did not hear it. I was listening to the confused sounds that came from the sitting-room.

My husband was pacing to and fro, muttering oaths, knocking against the furniture, breaking things. At one moment there was a crash of glass, as if he had helped himself to brandy and then in his ungovernable passion flung the decanter into the fire grate.

Somebody knocked at the sitting-room. It must have been a waiter, for through the wall I heard the muffled sound of a voice asking if there had been an accident. My husband swore at the man and sent him off.

Hadn't he told him not to come until he was rung for?

At length, after half an hour perhaps, my husband knocked at the door of my little room.

"Are you there?" he asked.

I made no answer.

"Open the door."

I sat motionless.

"You needn't be afraid. I'm not going to do anything. I've something to say."

Still I made no reply. My husband went away for a moment and then came back.

"If you are determined not to open the door I must say what I've got to say from here. Are you listening?"

Sitting painfully rigid I answered that I was.

Then he told me that what I was doing would entitle him to annul our marriage--in the eyes of the Church at all events.

If he thought that threat would intimidate me he was mistaken--a wave of secret joy coursed through me.

"It won't matter much to me--I'll take care it won't--but it will be a degrading business for you--invalidity and all that. Are you prepared for it?"

I continued to sit silent and motionless.

"I daresay we shall both be laughed at, but I cannot help that. We can't possibly live together on terms like these."

Another wave of joy coursed through me.

"Anyhow I intend to know before I leave the island how things are to be.

I'm not going to take you away until I get some satisfaction. You understand?"

I listened, almost without breathing, but I did not reply.