-that a wife will endure; but
seldom a wife can bear--as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore--with a long course of
brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her
small fits of gaiety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make
herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not what
she has been, and--worst of all--the love that she spends on her
children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear
to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no
harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of
endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their
feelings. A similar impulse makes a man say, '_Hutt_, you old beast!'
when a favourite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the
reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the
tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say.
But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her 'Teddy' as she called him.
Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhaps--this is only a theory
to account for his infamous behaviour later on--he gave way to the
queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband
twenty years married, when he sees, across the table, the same, same
face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so
must he continue to sit until the day of its death or his own. Most men
and all women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule,
must be a 'throw-back' to times when men and women were rather worse
than they are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.

Dinner at the Bronckhorsts' was an infliction few men cared to undergo.
Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his wife wince.
When their little boy came in at dessert Bronckhorst used to give him
half a glass of wine, and, naturally enough, the poor little mite got
first riotous, next miserable, and was removed screaming. Bronckhorst
asked if that was the way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs.
Bronckhorst could not spare some of her time 'to teach the little beggar
decency'. Mrs. Bronckhorst, who loved the boy more than her own life,
tried not to cry--her spirit seemed to have been broken by her marriage.
Lastly, Bronckhorst used to say, 'There! That'll do, that'll do. For
God's sake try to behave like a rational woman. Go into the
drawing-room.' Mrs. Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all off
with a smile; and