“Then there’ll be one. You think I’m a fool, you think I don’t know anything all these literary and society people know. I _do_ know. I know that a man and a woman have got to stick together, and if you go straying—you may think you’re straying after the moon or social work or anything—but there’s a strange man waiting round the corner for every woman and a strange woman for every man. Think _I_’ve had no temptations?... Oh! I _know_, I _know_. What’s life or anything but that? and it’s just because we’ve not gone on having more children, just because we listened to all those fools who said you were overdoing it, that all this fretting and grumbling began. We’ve got on to the wrong track, Elly, and we’ve got to get back to plain wholesome ways of living. See? That’s what I’ve come down here for and what I mean to do. We’ve got to save ourselves. I’ve been too—too modern and all that. I’m going to be a husband as a husband should. I’m going to protect you from these idees—protect you from your own self.... And that’s about where we stand, Elly, as I make it out.” He paused with the effect of having delivered himself of long premeditated things. Lady Harman essayed to speak. But she found that directly she set herself to speak she sobbed and began weeping. She choked for a moment. Then she determined she would go on, and if she must cry, she must cry. She couldn’t let a disposition to tears seal her in silence for ever. “It isn’t,” she said, “what I expected—of life. It isn’t——” “It’s what life is,” Sir Isaac cut in. “When I think,” she sobbed, “of what I’ve lost——” “_Lost!_” cried Sir Isaac. “Lost! Oh come now, Elly, I like that. What!—_lost_. Hang it! You got to look facts in the face. You can’t deny——Marrying like this,—you made a jolly good thing of it.” “But the beautiful things, the noble things!” “_What’s_ beautiful?” cried Sir Isaac in protesting scorn. “_What’s_ noble? ROT! Doing your duty if you like and being sensible, that’s noble and beautiful, but not fretting about and running yourself into danger. You’ve got to have a sense of humour, Elly, in this life——” He created a quotation. “As you make your bed—so shall you lie.” For an interval neither of them spoke. They crested the hill, and came into view of that advertisement board she had first seen in Mr. Brumley’s company. She halted, and he went a step further and halted too. He recalled his ideas about the board. He had meant to have them all altered but other things had driven it from his mind.... “Then you mean to imprison me here,” said Lady Harman to his back. He turned about. “It isn’t much like a prison. I’m asking you to stay here—and be what a wife _should_ be.” “I’m to have no money.” “That’s—that depends entirely on yourself. You know that well enough.” She looked at him gravely. “I won’t stand it,” she said at last with a gentle deliberation. She spoke so softly that he doubted his hearing. “_What?_” he asked sharply.