't begin recriminations," she retorted.

"I'm not beginning anything," he growled. "I'm jest telling you we can't
go on like this, living in the same place and acting like strangers. I'm
beginning to get wise to this queer shuffle of your family's----"

She shivered a little as his intense gaze searched her face.

"It wasn't a straight proposition, because all the perticlers wasn't put
in. I didn't know I was buying a woman----"

She flared up in an instant.

"How dare you----!"

"Wal, put it how you wish, it comes to the same thing in the end. I fell
to it all right, and I ain't squealing. If I was the sort o' man you, no
doubt, take me for, I might want value for money, and I'm big enough to
get it.... No need to get scared. Though you love me like you might a
rattlesnake, I happen to love you. You might as well know it."

His calmness amazed her. She had half expected a furious onslaught. On one
point she wanted to put him right.

"You think I despise you, but that's not true," she said. "I couldn't have
married you had I despised you. But I can't love you--I can't. Can't you
see that our ways lie far apart? All your life, your very mode of thought
and speech, are the direct antithesis of mine. Isn't it plain--wasn't it
plain at first that it was a mere bargain? You and I can be nothing to
each other but--friends."

"No, it wasn't," he growled. "If you'd have told me that, I'd have seen
you to hell before I married you, or even kissed you. Blood is blood, and
nature's nature, and passion's passion, and gew-gaws don't count--no, nor
polite chin-music either. You were my woman, and I wanted you before all
the other wimmen on God's earth. It's the little things that don't matter
that fills your mind. If men were all tea-slopping, thin-spined,
haw-hawing creatures like some I seen here, with never a darned notion of
how to dig for their daily bread, though they talked like angels and acted
like cardboard saints, this world 'ud be a darned poor show.... Anyway,
you've got to learn that.... We're going back to-morrow, and I guess we'd
better finish this play-acting. Devonshire's good enough for me if you'll
take the London house."

She nodded. That had been her own innermost desire. She was glad he made
the suggestion himself. Before coming away he had leased a house in Maida
Vale, and had given instructions to Liberty's to furnish it. It would be
pleasanter there, in the midst of friends, than planted away in th