ing. She pressed for something
more precise.

'Don't be irritable, Connie,' quavered Clarice, 'because that's just
what Sidney is--and always. It's so difficult to make you understand.
But he's just a lot of wires, and they keep twanging all day. He
nags--there's no other word for it--he nags about everything--the
servants, his publishers, the dinner, and--oh!--oh!--why can't he wear
boots in the morning?'

The point of the question was lost on Mrs. Willoughby. She began to
expostulate with Clarice for magnifying trifles.

'Of course,' replied Clarice, sitting up suddenly--she had been half
lying on the sofa in Mrs. Willoughby's arms--'I know they are trifles; I
know that. But make every day full of them, every day repeat them! Oh,
it's awful! I wonder I don't break down!' She turned again to Mrs.
Willoughby, lapsing from vehemence to melancholy as the notion occurred
to her. 'Connie, I believe I shall--break down altogether. You know I'm
not very strong.' She put her arms about Mrs. Willoughby, and clung to
her in the intensity of her self-compassion. 'You can't imagine the
strain it is. And if that wasn't enough, his mother comes up from Clapham
and lectures me. I wouldn't mind that, only she's not very safe about her
h's, and she stops to dinner and talks about the nobility she's had cooks
from, to impress the servants. It's so humiliating, to be lectured by any
one like that.'

Mrs. Willoughby scented a fact. 'But what does she lecture you about? The
dinner?' she asked, with an irrelevant recollection of Drake's impression
of Clarice as one little adapted for housewifely duties, and not rightly
to be troubled by them.

'Oh no. She says I don't give Sidney the help he expected from me. But
what more can I do? He has got me. Sidney says the same, too. He told me
that he had never had so much difficulty to work properly as since we
were married. And when his work doesn't succeed I know he blames me for
it. Oh, Connie! _is_ it my fault? I think we had better get divorced--and
I--I--c-c-can go into a convent, and never do anybody any more harm.'

Clarice glanced as she spoke down the neatest of morning frocks, and the
mental picture which she straightway had of herself in a white-washed
cell with iron bars, clad in shapeless black, her chin swathed, her face
under eaves of starched linen, induced an access of weeping.

For all her sympathy Mrs. Willoughby was forced to bite her lips.
Clarice, however, was not in