“You haven’t told me what you’ve been doing, Clemence?” he said. “Have you given notice at your bonnet shop as I told you?” Clemence lifted her head and sat up, clasping her hands lightly on the arm of his chair. “No!” she said gently. “I thought I would ask you to think about it again. I would so much rather go on if you didn’t mind. For one thing, what could I do all day?” She looked up into his face as she spoke with deprecating, pleading eyes, which were full of submission, too; and the submission was very pleasant to Julian. “I do mind,” he said authoritatively. “I can’t have it, Clemence. I can’t always see you home, don’t you see, and I won’t have you about at night alone. Besides, I don’t choose that you should work.” “But I do so want to!” she said, laying her hand timidly and beseechingly on his. “It will be so difficult for you to keep us both; you will overwork yourself, I’m so afraid. Oh, won’t you let me help? I’ve always worked, you know; it doesn’t hurt me. You don’t want to forget that you’ve married a work-girl, do you?” She smiled at him as she spoke, one of her sweet, rare smiles, and he kissed her impetuously. “Don’t talk nonsense!” he said imperiously. “I can’t allow it, and that’s all about it. How do you suppose I could attend to my work when I’m kept at the hospital in the evening, if I were thinking all the time of you alone in the streets! No, you must give notice on Monday!” She looked at him wistfully for a moment. He was condemning her to long days of idleness, to constant uneasiness and self-reproach on his behalf, to a certain loss of self-respect. But self-sacrifice was instinctive with her. “Very well!” she said simply. The little victory, the assertion of authority restored Julian’s spirits completely, and he plunged into discursive talk; more or less egotistical. It was all, necessarily, founded on falsehood, and it would have been a delicate question to decide when his talk ceased to be consciously untruthful, and became the expression of a fictitious Julian in whom the real Julian absolutely believed. The afternoon wore on; the winter twilight fell, bringing with it a slight return of the fog of the morning; two hours had passed before Julian moved reluctantly, and said that he must go. “I shall come to-morrow!” he said, taking her face between his hands and kissing it. “We’ll go out into the country if it’s fine. I wish it were summer-time! Have you ever seen the river, Clemence?” “Not in the country,” she said. “It must be nice! How much you’ve seen! Do you know I often think that you must wish sometimes I was a lady! I don’t know anything and I haven’t seen anything, and----” she faltered, and he rose, laughing and drawing her up into his arms. “Any one can know things,” he said lightly, “and any one can see things. But no one but you can be Clemence! Do you see? Oh, what a bore it is to have to go!”