s I am concerned, this
ends things. This ends things. We are married--but I don't care if we
were married five hundred times. I won't stop with a woman who takes
flowers from another man--"

"I _didn't_," said Ethel.

Lewisham gave way to a transport of anger. He caught up a handful of
roses and extended them, trembling. "What's _this_?" he asked. His
finger bled from a thorn, as once it had bled from a blackthorn spray.

"I _didn't_ take them," said Ethel. "I couldn't help it if they were
sent."

"Ugh!" said Lewisham. "But what is the good of argument and denial?
You took them in, you had them. You may have been cunning, but you
have given yourself away. And our life and all this"--he waved an
inclusive hand at Madam Gadow's furniture--"is at an end."

He looked at her and repeated with bitter satisfaction, "At an end."

She glanced at his face, and his expression was remorseless. "I will
not go on living with you," he said, lest there should be any
mistake. "Our life is at an end."

Her eyes went from his face to the scattered roses. She remained
staring at these. She was no longer weeping, and her face, save about
the eyes, was white.

He presented it in another form. "I shall go away."

"We never ought to have married," he reflected. "But ... I never
expected _this_!"

"I didn't know," she cried out, lifting up her voice. "I _didn't_
know. How could _I_ help! _Oh_!"

She stopped and stared at him with hands clenched, her eyes haggard
with despair.

Lewisham remained impenetrably malignant.

"I don't _want_ to know," he said, answering her dumb appeal. "That
settles everything. _That_!" He indicated the scattered flowers. "What
does it matter to me what has happened or hasn't happened? Anyhow--oh!
I don't mind. I'm glad. See? It settles things.

"The sooner we part the better. I shan't stop with you another
night. I shall take my box and my portmanteau into that room and
pack. I shall stop in there to-night, sleep in a chair or _think_. And
to-morrow I shall settle up with Madam Gadow and go. You can go back
... to your cheating."

He stopped for some seconds. She was deadly still. "You wanted to,
and now you may. You wanted to, before I got work. You remember? You
know your place is still open at Lagune's. I don't care. I tell you I
don't care _that_. Not that! You may go your own way--and I shall go
mine. See? And all this rot--this sham of living together when neither
cares for the other--I do