"I met him at a dance in Winnipeg first--the day after I'd had a horrid row with my sister-in-law. He'd just taken a large farm, with a decent house on it--not a shack--and everybody said his people were rich and were backing him. And he was very good-looking--and a Cambridge man--and all that. We danced together almost all the evening. Then he found out where I lived, and used to be always coming to see me. My brother never liked him. He said to me often, 'Why do you encourage that unprincipled cad? I'm certain there's a screw loose about him!' And I wasn't in love with Roger--not really--for one moment. But I _think_ he was in love with me--yes, I'm sure he was--at first. And he excited and interested me. I was proud, too, of taking him away from other girls, who were always running after him. And my sister-in-law was just mad to get rid of me! Don't you understand?" "Of course I do!" Her eyelids wavered a little under the emotion of his tone. "Well, then, we got married. My brother tried to get out of him what his money-affairs were. But he always evaded everything. He talked a great deal about this rich sister, and she did send him a wedding present. But he never showed me her letter, and that was the last we ever heard of her while I knew him...." Her voice dropped. She sat looking at the fire--a grey, pale woman, from whom light and youth had momentarily gone out. "Well, it's a hateful story--and as common!--as common as dirt. We began to quarrel almost immediately. He was jealous and tyrannical, and I always had a quick temper. I found that he drank, that he told me all sorts of lies about his past life, that he presently only cared about me as--well, as his mistress!"--and again she faced Ellesborough with hard, insistent eyes--"that he was hopelessly in debt--a gambler--and everything else. When the baby came, I could only get the wife of a neighbouring settler to come and look after me. And Roger behaved so abominably to her that she went home when the baby was a week old--and I was left to manage for myself. Then when baby was three months old, she caught whooping-cough, and had bronchitis on the top. I had a few pounds of my own, and I gave them to Roger to go in to Winnipeg and bring out a doctor and medicines. He drank all the money on the way--that I found out afterwards--he was a week away instead of two days--and the baby died. When he came back he told me a lie about having been ill. But I never lived with him--as a wife--after that. Then, of course, he hated me, and one night he nearly killed me. Next morning he apologized--said that he loved me passionately--and that kind of stuff--that I was cruel to him--and what could he do to make up? So then I suggested that he should go away for a month--and we should both think things over. He was rather frightened, because--well--he'd knocked me about a good deal in the horrible scene between us--and he thought I should bring my brother down on him.