don't mean particularly like this. Like this, I know you haven't.
But any other way?"

"No, I don't think I ever have. I went away from home when I was
eighteen--I wasn't happy there. Then I had to work too hard."

"Then you are a little starved gutter-arab." He took her gently in
his arms. "And what do I seem to you--eh? Sort of fairy prince, I
suppose, in gold armour."

"You seem like God, sometimes," she whispered.

He put her away with a stab of conscience--seated her on a chair and
looked down at her.

"It's silly to talk like that," he said evenly. "If there is a
God--and I suppose there is--the world spends a heap of money in
fostering the idea--then He's certainly more consistent in His being
than I am--though consistency always seems to me His weak point. But
you've not got to idealize me, you know. You remember what I once
said to you--don't you?"

"What was that?"

"There's a beast in every man, thank God!"

"Yes--I don't think I shall ever forget that."

"Well--don't," he added.

But even this did not harbour in her mind. She wrote long, impulsive
letters to Janet, pouring out a flood of description of all the places
which they visited, opening her heart of its perfect happiness.

"You said he was hard once," she wrote from Florence. "You said you
knew he was hard. He's never said a hard thing to me the whole time
we've been away. He may be hard to other people. I've seen him awfully
bitter sometimes, but never to me. We are in love, you see. We shall
always be in love. Dear, dear old Janet, I wish you could be with
us."

Janet took a deep breath when she had finished the reading of that
letter, and when Mrs. Hewson pushed some shrimps on to her plate,
she pulled the shells from them with impatient energy.

And so--slowly, even in that month--some little of the change in her
character was wrought. Her nature began to set in the mould of luxury
in which he placed her. Not for one moment was she spoilt by it; not
for one moment made selfish. Whenever he gave her money for a definite
object, she still made her purchases as cheaply as possible, still
brought what was left over in the flat of an empty palm to him. But
the enfranchising influence of those two years of hard work began
to lose its effect. She lost independence at every turn and, by the
time they returned to London, was beginning to lean on Traill, rely
on him, submit subserviently to every wish he uttered.

Such had been her dese