“I've seen Roebuck,” said I to Anita, because I must say something, if I was to stay on. “Roebuck?” she inquired. Her tone reminded me that his name conveyed nothing to her. “He and I are in an enterprise together,” I explained. “He is the one man who could seriously cripple me.” “Oh,” she said, and her indifference, forced though I thought it, wounded. “Well,” said I, “your mother was right.” She turned full toward me, and even in the dimness I saw her quick sympathy--an impulsive flash instantly gone. But it had been there! “I came in here,” I went on, “to say that--Anita, it doesn't in the least matter. No one in this world, no one and nothing, could hurt me except through you. So long as I have _you_, they--the rest--all of them together--can't touch me.” We were both silent for several minutes. Then she said, and her voice was like the smooth surface of the river where the boiling rapids run deep: “But you _haven't_ me--and never _shall_ have. I've told you that. I warned you long ago. No doubt you will pretend, and people will say, that I left you because you lost your money. But it won't be so.” I was beside her instantly, was looking into her face. “What do you mean?” I asked, and I did not speak gently. She gazed at me without flinching. “And I suppose,” she said satirically, “you wonder why I--why you are repellent to me. Haven't you learned that, though I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm not a physical coward? Don't bully and threaten. It's useless.” I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn me aside. “What did you mean?” I repeated. “Take your hand off me,” she commanded. “What did you mean?” I repeated sternly. “Don't be afraid to answer.” She was very young--so the taunt stung her. “I was about to tell you,” said she, “when you began to make it impossible.” I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position in which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder. “I am going to leave you,” she announced. “You forget that you are my wife,” said I. “I am not your wife,” was her answer, and if she had not looked so childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have held myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so helpless of ever being able to win her did she make me feel. “You are my wife and you will stay here with me,” I reiterated, my brain on fire. “I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please,” was her contemptuous retort. “Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman--but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman against her will.”