“That parrot cry will make me murder you some day. Be a woman, with a clear head on your shoulders, not a sniveling fool. Be a wife to me.” A queer, mocking expression contracted his thin mouth. “Help me when you can. If you offend Milligan----” “I’ll never speak to him again. Good Heavens! You don’t want me----” He sprung up from the table, took her by the trembling shoulder, and swung her round. “I don’t care what the devil you do,” he said deliberately. She looked weakly up into his face, saw that he meant it, and began to shake and sob. This was the worst blow he could deal. He meant it! Hitherto she had attributed his brutalities to business worry. She cried violently, hopelessly. She was all tears. She had no spirit left, except the spirit that vents itself in extravagant words. Suddenly she darted to the open window. “If I were to jump down,” she began desperately; her feverish hands clawed round the ledge, her wild eyes turned inward to the room. “It wouldn’t be a bad solution.” She ran back, tried to catch him round the neck with her pleading arms, murmured pet names, shivered, sobbed, shook, tried vainly, in the wrong way, to win back the old, transient adoration. He wrenched himself away, as he would have freed himself from a skein. “I’m sick of these rows,” he said savagely. “Do as I wish. Mind what you’re at with Sutton--he knows a precious deal that I’d rather he didn’t. Play Milligan. A clever woman would do it all without compromise, but you are a prude--one of those ardent, faithful prudes that make a man curse. Hang it all, I don’t want your extravagant devotion; I’m in need of help. I don’t care what you do so long as I don’t know--that’s married fidelity up to date. Do you understand?” “I can’t--I won’t! My life is one degradation; you don’t care. If I were some shameful woman, not your wife----” “By George! if you knew all, you’re little better. That jargon in the church--Sutton to give you away, the verger as best man--didn’t put you on a pedestal of virtue.” “I won’t--I can’t!” she repeated desperately, linking and unlinking her hands, looking up at him with the devoted, obstinate eyes of a dog who is afraid. “Then go. You are a burden, an irritant.” “You mean that?” “Of course. I mean everything.” He flung himself out of the room. Presently she heard him leave the flat with Sutton.