eir grey depths.

"What's for dinner?" she asked, suddenly, and Herrick looked his memory
to recall the _menu_.

"Soup, roast chicken, plum tart, and a savoury," he said at last,
smiling with a rather pathetic attempt at cheerfulness. "Mrs. Swastika,
as I call her, is what is known as a 'good plain cook,' but anything at
all elaborate throws her off her balance altogether."

"Have you no other servants?" she demanded shortly.

"Not yet. I didn't want them, you know, and I thought you would prefer
to choose them yourself."

"I? If I can get any," she said darkly, drawing her delicate brows
together resentfully. "Of course they won't stay when they find out
things; but we must be decently waited on."

Herrick made no reply; and his silence exasperated the girl, whose
nerves were all on edge.

"Oh, don't stand there saying nothing." Her voice was shrill. "Of
course, you think I ought to wait on myself--now. And I suppose because
I've been in prison you expect me to be thankful to be here--even in a
hole like this. Well, I'm not. I hate the place. It's common and shabby
and horrid, and I'm not going to live all anyhow, to please you."

Herrick, dismayed at the vehemence of her manner, could find no words;
and she went on with increasing passion:

"I'm your wife--if I _am_ a jail-bird!" She flung the taunt at him, and
her whole little figure was shaken with the intensity of her emotion.
"If you think I'm going to pretend to be penitent--and grateful to
you--you are wrong! I _hate_ you, Jim, I loathe and despise you--you
might have taken the blame on your shoulders--and instead you stood by
and watched them torture me. _You've_ not been to prison, _you've_ not
been bullied and despised--you've not spent weeks and months in a
loathsome little cell where the sun never shone and there was never a
breath of air--you've not been called by a number, and preached at by
the chaplain--oh, no, you've been living here in the sunshine--enjoying
yourself, eating good food--your chicken and your savouries--and for all
I know passing as a single man, and keeping your disgraced wife in the
background!"

She struck the table sharply with her hand, and her cup and saucer fell
to the ground and smashed, the tea trickling in a brown stream over the
dim blues and greens of the Persian carpet.

She ignored the catastrophe.

"Well, you've got me back now, and I'm going to make _your_ life what
mine has been for the last year and a ha