"You and Annabel have concocted a scheme," she went on, "that it is correct for a girl of nineteen to enjoy foreign travel, and improving to her mind to see strange countries: and that, therefore, the South of France must be the one thing that I yearn for. But as a matter of fact, I don't yearn for it at all: it would bore me to death, and I'm not going there. Why should I do things that I hate, because you and Annabel have decided that I ought to enjoy them, and therefore that I do? In the same way Annabel has decided that the East wind ought to give you a cold on your chest, though as a matter of fact it never does: but you don't dare to face it, for fear of offending Annabel by not catching cold when she expected you to." I had believed that it was Annabel alone who was fussy about the East wind, and that I was laughing at her from my superior height: but now I learned my mistake. "What I do enjoy," continued my angry darling, "is acting with Frank and the Loxleys: and I mean to do it, too. And if you and Annabel want to go to your fusty old South of France for Easter, go: but leave me at home with Frank, who will be back by then." And she tossed her curly head and dashed out of the room. For a few seconds I sat absolutely stunned by this unexpected outburst: and then I stretched out my arms on the table in front of me, and buried my head in them, so as to shut out the sight and the sound of everything: for I felt that my world was tumbling down about my ears. Bitterly hurt as I was, I could yet look at the matter from Fay's point of view. Annabel and I were dull old fogies, and the life that I had offered to my darling was not half full enough to satisfy her. In spite of all my struggles to adopt modern ideas, I was evidently still wrapped in the toils of the Victorian tradition that the warming of her husband's slippers is an occupation noble enough to satisfy the aspirations of any woman's soul. In my heart I had smiled at Annabel's antiquated ideas: but in Fay's young eyes my ideas were as antiquated as Annabel's. Yet I would have given everything--even life itself--to make my darling happy: and therein lay the core of the tragedy. The good that I would do, I could not: I was too old. I had done my best, and I had failed. What, then, was there left to live for? I was so swallowed up in this engulfing wave of sick misery that I did not hear the door open or any one enter the room. But I was roused from the stupor of despair into which I had fallen by feeling a pair of soft arms clinging round my neck, and a soft cheek pressed against my own; whilst the voice that made the music of my life said in a trembling whisper: "I'm so awfully sorry, Reggie, for being such a beast. Do forgive me, and I'll never be such a brute again." So I was raised by a touch from the Slough of Despair to the Summit of the Delectable Mountains. CHAPTER XVI A SORROWFUL SPRINGTIME