By this time she was in tears. Beauchamp was no great reader of poetry. He "got up" what was wanted for drawing-room small talk, and that was about all. But, as it happened, he knew the poem--the story of it, at least, to which she alluded, and had more than once made great fun of it. "Catch any woman of the lower classes being such a fool. Founded on fact, not a bit of it. She died of consumption, you may be sure," was the opinion he had expressed. So, being a little "put out" to begin with, and by no means in the humour for a sentimental scene--tears, and all the rest of it--Eugenia's somewhat incoherent speech, the allusion at the end of it especially, met with by no means a tender or sympathising reception. "Really, Eugenia," he began, and at the sound of the two words all the new hopefulness, the revived tenderness, the warmth died in the girlish wife's heart--a cold, dull ache of disappointment, relieved but by the more acute stings of mortification and wounded feeling, setting in, the same instant, in their stead. "Really, Eugenia, you choose very odd times for your fits of--I really don't know what to call it--exaggerated sentiment, as you object to `gushingness.' We haven't been quarrelling that I know of, and I have no intention of doing so. What you mean by talking of `not regretting' anything, I don't know in the least. I hate maudlin sentiment, and that poetry you are so fond of stuffs your head with it. For goodness' sake, try to be comfortable, and let me be so. No one expects impossibilities of you--you talk as if I were an unreasonable tyrant. If anything could `drive us apart,' as you call it, it would be this sort of nonsense, and these everlasting tears." He had paused once or twice in this speech, but Eugenia remained perfectly silent, and this irritated him into saying more than he intended, more than he actually felt, and the consciousness of the harshness of his own words irritated him still further. Still Eugenia did not speak. He let down the carriage window on his side impatiently, thrust his head out into the darkness, then drew it in, and jerked up the glass again. Eugenia did not move--he glanced at her. The tears he had complained of had disappeared as if by magic; her face, in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, looked unnaturally white and set, the mouth compressed, the eyes gazing straight before them. It was really too bad of her to behave so absurdly, thought Beauchamp, feeling himself not a little aggrieved. Still, he wished he had not spoken quite so strongly. "Eugenia," he began again, "do try to be reasonable. You take up everything so exaggeratedly. You know perfectly well I have no wish to hurt you. But really it is not easy to avoid doing so. Living with you is like treading on egg-shells."