schief--you've been too durned entertaining--you're feeling the
strain. See here, Joyce, maybe you better not be so--amusing in the
future. Maybe you better leave Gaston to me--business is business and I
guess we can do without petticoats in this camp."

He was losing control of himself.

"Jude," Joyce came close and tried to put her hands on her husband's
shoulders. "Jude, I want you to pay Mr. Gaston back as soon as you can.
It's been on my mind for quite a spell. We must owe him a lot. How much,
Jude?"

"None of your--durned business."

"And Jude--don't borrow any more. I know Mr. Drew would advance anything
for the building. His family is terribly rich. Mr. Gaston knows about
them. I'd rather owe Mr. Drew than Mr. Gaston. Please, Jude!"

For a moment the sweet, quivering face put forth its appeal to the lower
nature of the man. The girl was young enough, and new enough to sway
Jude after a fashion, but the charm died almost at birth.

"See here." Jude slipped from the clinging hands, and glared angrily.
"You ain't ever properly learned your place. You better let go any fool
idee that you can budge me with your wiles. I don't have to buy your
favours--they're mine. What I do, I do, and you take what I choose to
let you have. See? If you get more than what is rightfully yours, don't
get sot up with the notion I don't know what I'm permitting. I guess
I've got to let you see what you're up against a little plainer. I had
a kind of dim idee that your schooling and book-learning made you a bit
keener than most about the real facts of the case, but you're all alike.
Don't you question me in the future, girl, and you go your way--the way
I _let_ you go--and be thankful, but don't you forget you and me is
_man_ and _wife_, and that means just one durned thing in St. Ange and
only one."

Joyce staggered back as if the man before her had dealt her a blow.

What had happened? Then she remembered that Jude was always irritable
when he had been roused from sleep, or when he was hungry.

The blindness was mercifully clouding her soul now; but its duration was
brief. It only gave her time to stand upright.

"Did you think I was asleep to-night?" Jude almost hissed the words.

The suddenness of the question had all the evil power of reducing the
girl to an appearance of guilt.

"You were asleep," she whispered back.

Jude laughed cruelly.

"With my eyes opened," he snarled--"It pays to _seem_ asleep, when you
want