like air from a pest-house.

He gave no thought to Leonora at all; he had sent in his papers. They
were to leave in a month. It seemed to him to be his duty to leave that
place and to go away, to support Leonora. He did his duty.

It was horrible, in their relationship at that time, that whatever she
did caused him to hate her. He hated her when he found that she proposed
to set him up as the Lord of Branshaw again--as a sort of dummy lord,
in swaddling clothes. He imagined that she had done this in order to
separate him from Maisie Maidan. Hatred hung in all the heavy nights and
filled the shadowy corners of the room. So when he heard that she
had offered to the Maidan boy to take his wife to Europe with him,
automatically he hated her since he hated all that she did. It seemed to
him, at that time, that she could never be other than cruel even if, by
accident, an act of hers were kind.... Yes, it was a horrible situation.

But the cool breezes of the ocean seemed to clear up that hatred as if
it had been a curtain. They seemed to give him back admiration for her,
and respect. The agreeableness of having money lavishly at command,
the fact that it had bought for him the companionship of Maisie
Maidan--these things began to make him see that his wife might have been
right in the starving and scraping upon which she had insisted. He was
at ease; he was even radiantly happy when he carried cups of bouillon
for Maisie Maidan along the deck. One night, when he was leaning beside
Leonora, over the ship's side, he said suddenly:

"By jove, you're the finest woman in the world. I wish we could be
better friends."

She just turned away without a word and went to her cabin. Still, she
was very much better in health.

And now, I suppose, I must give you Leonora's side of the case....

That is very difficult. For Leonora, if she preserved an unchanged
front, changed very frequently her point of view. She had been
drilled--in her tradition, in her upbringing--to keep her mouth shut.
But there were times, she said, when she was so near yielding to the
temptation of speaking that afterwards she shuddered to think of those
times. You must postulate that what she desired above all things was
to keep a shut mouth to the world; to Edward and to the women that he
loved. If she spoke she would despise herself.

From the moment of his unfaithfulness with La Dolciquita she never acted
the part of wife to Edward. It was not that she