"You think you know." "I am sure I know." All at once she changed her tone. "I am bound to give way to you," she said, with an assumption of humility, "for you are my husband. I have no wish to irritate you, or to unsettle your mind more than it is already unsettled. There are women who, for less than you have said, for less than you have done, would have put you into a private madhouse. The delusions you have been under are very serious to me, but I will bear them as long as I can. If I were to tell any official, any doctor, that, returning home after a long absence, you never once inquired for your child, born during your absence, it would be a sufficient proof of your insanity." "I heard in New York that you had a child," I said, "and it brought me home earlier than I had intended." "Kind, thoughtful husband," she murmured, vindictively. "I would have avoided the subject," I said; "I would avoid it now. Shameless woman! Not upon the head of an innocent child, of whom I am not the father, do I desire to visit the sin of the mother. It would have become you better--if any suggestion that is good and modest in woman could occur to you--to have omitted all mention of your child. Listen now to me with your best attention. In the course I am adopting I am prompted by but one desire--to avoid the shame which publicity would bring upon me. For that reason have I kept my return home a secret from every person but yourself with whom I am acquainted in London; for that reason I have taken this lodging in an obscure locality, so that I may confer the more privately with you, and endeavour to bring you to a true sense of your position. Publicity will bring shame to me; it will bring beggary to you--absolute beggary. Let that fact sink into your mind; ponder well over it; and while you think of it let this declaration which I am about to make have its due weight. If you drive me to the extremity of forcing you into a public court, and the case be decided against you, as it must, no persuasion or entreaty shall induce me to assist you to the value of a shilling in your future. You will have to depend absolutely upon yourself and your vile associate for your means of living. You compel me to hold out this threat, which, under other circumstances, I should deem unmanly and inhuman." "It _is_ unmanly and inhuman," she said. "Why do you hold out such a threat?" "Because, as I have said, it is the only means I can adopt to bring you to a proper understanding of your position. Shame you could bear, for you have already borne it, and it has not touched your fatal beauty." Her vain nature could not but be gratified at this admission, and she bestowed upon me a radiant smile. "But poverty, if I have the slightest knowledge of your character, you could not bear. It would be the bitterest punishment with which you could be visited."