dmiration of a beautiful woman and effort
to keep honest. You read my downright preference of what most people
would call poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company.
You enlist among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come
round to the thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking for me;
and that's why you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So
much for me. You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose
to cloud her with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, 'arriving in
a strange country, next to friendless; and each new incident bred of a
luckless beginning--I could say more.'

Fleetwood nodded. 'You are read without the words: You read in history,
too, I suppose, that there are two sides to most cases. The loudest is
not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.
That's reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful
shrew, who pretends to suspect anything that's villanous, because she
can hit on no other way of striking.'

'Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world,' muttered Gower. 'Lady
Fleetwood had a troubled period after her marriage. She suffered a
sort of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There's a book by an
Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will
have a distrust of you, as regards the child, until she understands you
by living with you under one roof.'

'Such animals these women are!' Good Lord!' Fleetwood ejaculated. 'I
marry one, and I 'm to take to reading medical books!' He yawned.

'You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature,' said Gower. 'You
hate Nature unless you have it served on a dish by your own cook. That's
the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the sin of
sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the
soil, and trim and point him to grow, and she's an animal for her pains!
The secret of your malady is, you've not yet, though you're on a healthy
leap for the practices of Nature, hopped to the primary conception
of what Nature means. Women are in and of Nature. I've studied them
here--had nothing to do but study them. That most noble of ladies' whole
mind was knotted to preserve her child during her time of endurance up
to her moment of trial. Think it over. It's your one chance of keeping
sane.

And expect to hear flat stuff from me while you go on playing tyrant.'

'You certainly take libertie