“I won’t say anything on that point, it may have been a joke on his part, but it must stop now. Understand me, Olive. I don’t wish to seem harsh, but you must not meet and talk with this man again. If you chance on him, pass by and say you can have no further communication with him. If he urges an objection, say I have forbidden you to see him, as I do forbid you, here and now. He will take that for an answer, scoundrel as he is, for among people of his stamp personal vanity does duty for better feelings. He won’t come again to a house where the lady has once shown him the door. You don’t in the least understand what his motives are in this new-fangled interest of his in Perfection City, but I understand them very clearly, and my wish is that you never see him again. Harm is sure to come of it if you do.” Olive was very much alarmed at her husband’s stern manner and peremptory order, but she was also indignant. Mr. Perseus or Cotterell, as she must now call him, had shown great respect and deference to her and had evinced a desire to be guided by her to higher aspirations. She was not sure of the meaning of some of his remarks, or rather she wished she could find some other reasonable explanation for them than the one most people would undoubtedly attach to them. Still she resented her husband’s masterful manner. “I will of course obey your orders, Ezra,” she said with a tart emphasis on the word which made him wince, “because I hold old-fashioned ideas of what wifely duty is, quite at variance with the high standard of individual liberty as maintained and explained, I believe, by the brethren of Perfection City. You may rest quite satisfied, I will obey you.” Having thus stabbed her husband in his most vulnerable point and dexterously driven the poignard up to the hilt in the wound, Olive walked away, leaving Ezra to feel himself a selfish brute. Ezra spent a wretched half day of self-reproach, and then crept back repentant, begging to be forgiven for being a tyrant to his poor little pet. And his little pet who had paid for her pride with abundant tears, allowed him to kiss her and fondle her and call her sweet silly names, while she declared she never cared to see or speak to that wretched Mr. Cotterell again, and no wonder he was ashamed of his own name, etc., etc., all in the most foolish and approved manner possible to the newly married.