“You can't understand--it all seems so strange. Let me gather myself together for a moment--darling.” She trembled on the last word. It was the first time she had used it to him. He pressed her hand and leaned back on the cushions. Clytie looked out of the window at the telegraph poles and trees and broad fields swaying past. Whither was this tearing train carrying her? Out of her life into a new, strange world whose habits and customs and laws and speech were all foreign to her? She was married. She no longer belonged to herself. Her independence was gone. She had promised to love, honour, and obey this man by her side until death should part them. That would be a long time--many, many years. The thought frightened her. Until then she had scarce realised what married life meant, in this respect. Why had she married this man? As this question passed through her mind her husband raised the hand he held to his lips. The blood rushed hot to her cheeks, she did not finish the mental question, but turning quickly, looked at him for a moment, and falling under the spell of his eyes, yielded to his arm, forgetting all things. He had the power of drowning in a more lurid blaze those glimmerings of self-revelation. She whispered so to him laughingly, and he accepted it as a man generally does accept such things--not seeing that it was of deeper significance than a woman's ordinary tribute of tenderness. “You are my beautiful Clytie,” he said, kissing her, and for a season she was content with the response. There was a lover's silence between them, which she broke at length by saying: “Don't you think it would have been much nicer if we could have had one another on trial--say for six months?” > “So that you could all the time be thinking whether you should repent of your bargain? Oh, dear, no!” “Ah! you say that; but would it not have been better, if we grew to hate each other, to be able to shake hands and say good-bye? For we may quarrel dreadfully, you know.” He answered her with tender assurances, laughed at her fears. “We shall never quarrel if you are a good little girl and do as you are told,” he said. Clytie laughed, seeing only jesting in the remark. “And we shall never quarrel if you let me go where I like and do what I like and say what I like.” “But you will always want to go and do and say as I like, darling,” said Thornton. “So we shall never quarrel.” “Then you will never want me to be severely respectable?” asked Clytie, with a touch of insistence. “I shan't allow you to flirt with any and everybody, if you mean that,” he replied, showing his white teeth as he smiled. “I didn't mean that--for the simple reason that I have a certain amount of brains.” “There have been many coquettes with magnificent intellects.” She made no reply. Then, seeing that he had ruffled her, he adroitly turned their talk into less dangerous channels.