would draw his pay; half of him was a
blazing hunger for whisky after three weeks' abstinence and hard work
and peace; the other half of him was fighting the desire desperately; he
wanted to win over one of these warring halves to the other; the fact
that he had been drinking all the evening had weakened the finer half;
his brain worked quickly. If he could find some grievance against
Marcella he would be able to excuse himself to himself for getting
drunk, for taking the money that he knew she needed. He wanted
peace--unity within. So he raved at her because the tag had come off his
shoelace, and it was her wifely duty to see that a new lace had been put
into the shoe that morning. From that he went on to the usual gibberish
of French, the usual accusation against men in the neighbourhood, the
usual _melange_ of Chinese tortures and gruesome operations. From
Kraill's horrified face Marcella saw that he understood more than she
did. She had never been sufficiently morbid to ask anyone to translate
his words for her, even after more than three years of them.

She wondered weakly what would happen. Judging Kraill by her father and
Dr. Angus she knew that his ordinary code of convention could not let
him disregard Louis as the others did, as being merely a rather weak,
silly young man, who "went on the shikker" every month and made many
varieties of a fool of himself. Everyone gave him the mixture of
disgusted toleration and amusement given to a spoilt child who kicks his
nurse in the park, and pounds his toys to pieces. Marcella never talked
about him to anyone; she cut off ungraciously the attempts at
sympathetic pumping made by the women at Klondyke. They concluded that
she did not feel anything since she never cried out. But, looking at
Kraill's face for one fleeting instant Marcella knew that he understood
how sore and shamed she was.

"He's very ill, really," she said in a low voice. "But no one believes
it. They think he's just wicked. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow. I
expect you know without my telling you. But I didn't want you to see him
like this. I've fixed up a bed for you at home. Will you let Jerry show
you the way?"

He decided instantly that she knew her own business better than he did,
and that his desire, both natural and conventional, not to leave a woman
to see a drunken man to bed, was not going to help her.

"Shut your door up tight, please," she said. "He may not go to sleep for
a long ti