o preserve even her respect. He had shown
himself to her freely as he was, jocosely cynical on everything that
women prize, brutal when he chose to give way to his temper, faithless
on principle, selfish to the core; perhaps the secret of the fascination
he exercised over her was his very ingenuousness, his boldness in
defying fortune, his clever grasp of circumstances. She said to him one
day, when he had been telling her that as likely as not she might have
to take in washing or set up a sewing-machine:

'I am not afraid. You can always get money. There's nothing you can't
do.'

He laughed.

'That may be true. But how if I disappear some day and leave you to take
care of yourself?'

He had often threatened this in his genial way, and it never failed to
blanch her cheeks.

'If you do that,' she said, 'I shall kill myself.'

At which he laughed yet more loudly.

In her house at Wimbledon she perished of _ennui_, for she was as lonely
as Adela in Holloway. Much lonelier; she had no resources in herself.
Rodman was away all day in London, and very often he did not return at
night; when the latter was the case, Alice cried miserably in her bed
for hours, so that the next morning her face was like that of a wax doll
that has suffered ill-usage. She had an endless supply of novels, and
day after day bent over them till her head ached. Poor Princess! She had
had her own romance, in its way brilliant and strange enough, but only
the rags of it were left. She clung to them, she hoped against hope that
they would yet recover their gloss and shimmer. If only he would not so
neglect her! All else affected her but little now that she really knew
what it meant to see her husband utterly careless, not to be held by
any pettings or entreaties. She heard through him of her brother 'Arry's
disgrace; it scarcely touched her. Her brother Richard she was never
tired of railing against, railed so much, indeed, that it showed she
by no means hated him as much as she declared. But nothing would have
mattered if only her husband had cared for her.

She had once said to Adela that she disliked children and hoped never
to have any. It was now her despair that she remained childless. Perhaps
that was why he had lost all affection?

In the summer Rodman once quitted her for nearly three weeks, during
which she only heard from him once. He was in Ireland, and, he asserted,
on business. The famous 'Irish Dairy Company,' soon to occupy a s