reature! And for a moment she had been on the point of
thinking there was something in him. He grovelled at her feet like a
cur. She gave him a little scornful kick.

"Get out," she said. "I hate you."

He tried to hold her, but she pushed him aside. She stood up. She began
to take off her dress. She kicked off her shoes and slid the stockings
off her feet, then she slipped on her old Mother Hubbard.

"Where are you going?"

"What's that got to do with you? I'm going down to the pool."

"Let me come too," he said.

He asked as though he were a child.

"Can't you even leave me that?"

He hid his face in his hands, crying miserably, while she, her eyes hard
and cold, stepped past him and went out.

From that time she entirely despised him; and though, herded together in
the small bungalow, Lawson and Ethel with her two children, Brevald, his
wife and her mother, and the vague relations and hangers-on who were
always in and about, they had to live cheek by jowl, Lawson, ceasing to
be of any account, was hardly noticed. He left in the morning after
breakfast, and came back only to have supper. He gave up the struggle,
and when for want of money he could not go to the English Club he spent
the evening playing hearts with old Brevald and the natives. Except when
he was drunk he was cowed and listless. Ethel treated him like a dog.
She submitted at times to his fits of wild passion, and she was
frightened by the gusts of hatred with which they were followed; but
when, afterwards, he was cringing and lachrymose she had such a contempt
for him that she could have spat in his face. Sometimes he was violent,
but now she was prepared for him, and when he hit her she kicked and
scratched and bit. They had horrible battles in which he had not always
the best of it. Very soon it was known all over Apia that they got on
badly. There was little sympathy for Lawson, and at the hotel the
general surprise was that old Brevald did not kick him out of the
place.

"Brevald's a pretty ugly customer," said one of the men. "I shouldn't be
surprised if he put a bullet into Lawson's carcass one of these days."

Ethel still went in the evenings to bathe in the silent pool. It seemed
to have an attraction for her that was not quite human, just that
attraction you might imagine that a mermaid who had won a soul would
have for the cool salt waves of the sea; and sometimes Lawson went also.
I do not know what urged him to go, for Ethel was