‘How do you make that out? Has your want of money anything to do with my mismanagement? Have the children anything to do with it? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ ‘Ought I?’ he returns, biting his lip. ‘Then, perhaps, you’ll be glad to hear that I have applied for a foreign appointment that will take me out to India, or the Brazils, for the remainder of my life.’ ‘Oh, Roland!’ she cries, catching her breath; ‘but not to leave us?’ ‘Certainly to leave you. That was the sole object of my application. Aren’t you delighted to hear it? We lead a cat-and-dog life as things are at present, and the sooner we are separated the better.’ ‘But the children—and _me_!’ she gasps, with a face of chalky whiteness. ‘Oh, don’t be afraid! you will be provided for.’ ‘But if you should be ill?’ suggests the woman fearfully. ‘Then I shall die, perhaps, and so much the better. You have not made my life such a heaven to me that I shall lose much by its resignation.’ Then she falls upon his neck, weeping. ‘Oh, Roland, Roland! do not speak to me like that.’ But he pushes her from him. He has had no dinner, and that is a trial that never improves the masculine temper. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself!’ he says roughly. Juliet raises her head and dries her eyes. She is a proud woman and a high-spirited one, and never disposed to take a rebuff meekly. ‘I _am_ a fool,’ she answers. ‘Any woman would be a fool who wasted a regret upon such an icicle as you are. I hope to Heaven you may get your appointment and go out to the Brazils, and never come back again; for the less I see and hear of you the better.’ ‘Just what I said,’ remarks her husband indifferently. ‘You are as sick of me as I am of you, and it’s of no use disguising the truth from one another.’ ‘There _was_ a time when you thought nothing too good to say of me,’ she cries, hysterically. ‘Was there? Well, you can’t expect such things to last for ever, and you have really made my life such a hell to me of late that you can’t be surprised if I look forward to any change as a blessing.’ ‘Oh! It has come to that, has it—that you want to get rid of me? Why don’t you put the finishing stroke to your cruelty and say at once that you hate me?’ ‘I am afraid you are making me do something very much like it.’ ‘The truth is, you are tired of me, Roland! It is nursing your children and trying out of our scanty income to provide for your wants that has brought me down to what I am, and since I have ceased to please your eyes, I have wearied out your fancy.’ ‘Yes! my dear,’ he says, with provoking nonchalance. ‘You are quite right; I _am_ very tired of you, and particularly at this moment. Suppose you leave me to my writing, and go to bed.’