Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief: “I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understood the circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushed about. If I had known the circumstances--” Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: “Circumstances!” “My dear,” the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on soft fingers, “my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's, leaving you, as you expressly desired, to pay the man _yourself_. When I came _back_ to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to a further _sixpence_ and that you had no _change_.” Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: “Nothing of the kind!” she burst. “Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you when you asked what was the matter?” “I quite forget.” “You do not forget.” “My dear, I really and truly do forget.” “For the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if you pushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head.” “Did he say _mug?_” asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who, knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferocious murder. “Well you know that he _did_ say mug--_ugly_ mug. Was _that_ a thing for a man of spirit to take quietly? Was _that_ a thing for a wife to hear bawled at her husband in the open street with the commissionaire grinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never forget my humiliation when you handed him sixpence.” The unhappy husband murmured: “I do so wish you could, my dear.” Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfect tactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter. She said: “Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That's right! _That's_ right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have our cross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my husband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open.” Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which implied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes tightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered nerves, swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by way of happy release from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and, before her amazed husband could open his lips, hammered in the attack from a third quarter. “Little you would have cared,” cried she, “if a miracle had not saved my life this afternoon!” Mr. Chater stood aghast. “My dearest! Saved you! From what?” His dearest bitterly inquired: “What does it matter to you? You take no interest. If my battered corpse--” Swept to tremendous heights by the combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. “If my battered corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this very afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?”