“Well, I think it would be very silly of you to come in the rain. You bet, I shouldn’t go if I could help it.” “Then go,” she said. She kept back with difficulty the bitter words which were on the tip of her tongue. “You’re much better at home,” said her husband, cheerfully. “I shall be in to tea at five. Ta-ta!” He might have said a thousand things. He might have said that nothing would please him more than that she should accompany him, that the appointment could go to the devil and he would stay with her. But he went off, cheerfully whistling. He didn’t care. Bertha’s cheeks grew red with the humiliation of his refusal. “He doesn’t love me,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears--the first tears of her married life, the first she had wept since her father’s death; and they made her ashamed. She tried to control them, but could not and wept ungovernably. Edward’s words seemed terribly cruel; she wondered how he could have said them. “I might have expected it,” she said; “he doesn’t love me.” She grew angry with him, remembering the little coldnesses which had often pained her. Often he almost pushed her away when she came to caress him--because he had at the moment something else to occupy him; often he had left unanswered her protestations of undying affection. Did he not know that he cut her to the quick? When she said she loved him with all her heart, he wondered if the clock was wound up! Bertha brooded for two hours over her unhappiness, and, ignorant of the time, was surprised to hear the trap again at the door; her first impulse was to run and let Edward in, but she restrained herself. She was very angry. He entered, and shouting to her that he was wet and must change, pounded upstairs. Of course he had not noticed that for the first time since their marriage his wife had not met him in the hall when he came in--he never noticed anything. Edward entered the room, his face glowing with the fresh air. “By Jove, I’m glad you didn’t come. The rain simply poured down. How about tea? I’m starving.” He thought of his tea when Bertha wanted apologies, humble excuses, a plea for pardon. He was as cheerful as usual and quite unconscious that his wife had been crying herself into a towering passion. “Did you buy your sheep?” she said, in an indignant tone. She was anxious for Edward to notice her discomposure, so that she might reproach him for his sins; but he noticed nothing. “Not much,” he cried. “I wouldn’t have given a fiver for the lot.” “You might as well have stayed with me, as I asked you.” “As far as business goes, I really might. But I dare say the drive across country did me good.” He was a man who always made the best of things. Bertha took up a book and began reading. “Where’s the paper?” asked Edward. “I haven’t read the leading articles yet.” “I’m sure I don’t know.”