“I wish you wouldn’t be so curt before the servants. They might think we’d been married ten years by your manners. You never seem to consider me. If I wish a thing you immediately contradict me. I suppose my very wishing it is enough to set your temper on edge. You never seem to think I need amusing.” “My dear girl, I suppose I am dull at times.” “Dull! You put it mildly.” “Indeed!” “For Heaven’s sake, stop cracking those nuts. I have a beastly headache, and you fidget me to death. You men are so abominably selfish. Do you ever realize that we have been stuffed down in this place a month; I am getting sick of being bored out of my skin every hour of the day. I tell you, I can’t stand it; it’s getting on my nerves. We must rake up a house-party or do something outrageous. I never imagined you could be such a brutal dullard.” The man laughed half cynically. The philosophic part of him was amused despite the occasion. “You forget that we have become orthodox and respectable,” he said, “that we are expected to rent a pew in church, subscribe to missionary enterprises, exist on hash for lunch, and renounce the devil and all his angels. I am sorry I have contrived to become so abominably orthodox. I am only endeavoring to live up to middle-class ideals, dumpling-and-treacle philosophy, the ethics of top-hats and mid-day dinners on Sunday. Perhaps you might suggest some new and original piece of wickedness.” The sally had no emollient effect upon Ophelia’s petulance. Her claws were out; and she was not a woman who could regain her amiability within half a day. She could lose most things, even her purse, with facility, but a grievance clung like a rubefacient plaster. “One would think you had married me to be amused,” she said. “Yours is the Eve’s part of the compact.” “As a matter of fact, you seem to care more for a shilling volume of essays than for my company.” “Really!” “No woman should allow a library to exist in her house.” “My dear girl, you are surely not jealous of Schopenhauer?” “I have never heard of the fellow.” “Perhaps it is as well; he is somewhat caustic.” The wife gathered her gown and prepared to depart to the drawing-room. Gabriel opened the door for her. She gave him a look as she went out. “I shall expect you in half an hour for billiards.” “I will attempt to be punctual. Tell James to serve my coffee in the library.” “Drat the library.” came the retort. Now whether it was pure perversity on Gabriel’s part, or the romantic mesmerism of the work on which he was engaged, an honest eighty minutes had passed before he appeared in the red-and-white salon. Clouds had blackened still further the spiritual atmosphere. The fire had died to embers; a cheap novel lay dishevelled on the hearth-rug as though precipitated there in a moment of irritation. Ophelia was sitting with her feet on the fender, her chin resting on her clinched fists.