n'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.

"I won't stand it," she repeated. "No."

"But--what can you do?"

"I don't know," she said, after a moment of grave consideration.

For some moments his mind hunted among possibilities.

"It's me that's standing it," he said. He came closely up to her. He
seemed on the verge of rhetoric. He pressed his thin white lips
together. "Standing it! when we might be so happy," he snapped, and
shrugged his shoulders and turned with an expression of mournful
resolution towards the house again. She followed slowly.

He felt that he had done all that a patient and reasonable husband could
do. _Now_--things must take their course.

Sec.5

The imprisonment of Lady Harman at Black Strand lasted just one day
short of a fortnight.

For all that time except for such interludes as the urgent needs of the
strike demanded, Sir Isaac devoted himself to the siege. He did all he
could to make her realize how restraine