“What’s the use of talking?” she broke in hastily; “there’s nothing to say; it’s all as stale as anything could be. You’re so extraordinarily dull when you’re in the ‘picking up the pieces’ mood; not content with behaving like a second-rate bricklayer and then sulking for a week you add to it by a long recital, ‘the virtues of an obedient wife’—a little tiresome, don’t you think?” Her nerves were all to pieces, she really wasn’t well, and the heat was terrible; the sight of him sitting there with that pathetic, ill-used look on his face, drove her nearly to madness. To think that she was tied for life to so feeble a creature. “No, please,” he said, “I know that I’m tiresome and stupid. But really I’ve been seeing things differently these last few days. We might get along better. I’ll try; I know it’s been largely my fault, not seeing things and not trying——” “Oh!” she broke in furiously, “for God’s sake stop it. Isn’t it bad enough and tiresome enough for me already without all this stuff! I’m sick of it, sick of it, I tell you. Sick of the whole thing. You spoke your mind the other night, I’ll speak mine now. You can take it or leave it.” She rose from her chair and stood looking out to sea, her hands clenched at her sides. “Oh! these years! these years! Always the same thing. You’ve never stuck up to anything, never fought anything, and it’s all been so tame. And now you want us to go over the same old ground again, to patch it up and go on as if we hadn’t had twenty long dreary years of it and would give a good deal not to have another.” She stopped and looked at him, smiling curiously. “Oh! James! My poor dear, you’re such a bore. Try not to be so painfully good; you might even be a little amusing!” She walked slowly away towards the girls. She passed, with them, down the path. He picked up the broken pieces of his thoughts and tried to put them slowly together. His first thought of her and of the whole situation was that it was hopeless, perfectly hopeless. He had fancied, stupidly, blindly, that his having moved included her moving too, quite without reason, as he now thoroughly saw. She was just where they had both been a week ago, she was even, from his neglect of her during these last days, a little farther back; it was harder than ever for her to see in line. His discovery of this affected him very little. He was very slightly wounded by the things that she had said to him, and her rejection of his advances so finally and completely distressed him scarcely at all. As he sat and watched the colours steal mistily across the sea he knew that he was too happy at all the discoveries that he was making to mind anything else. He was setting out on an adventure, and if she would not come too it could simply not be helped; it did not in the least alter the adventure’s excitement.