fact that you are very rich."

"Don't say that again," cried he. "I never said or pretended I was
rich. I have about five thousand a year--and you'll not get a cent of
it, madam!"

She knew his income, but no one would have suspected it from her
expression of horror. "What!" she gasped. "You dared to marry ME when
you were a--beggar! Me--the widow of Henry Gower! You impudent old
wreck! Why, you haven't enough to pay my servants. What are we to
live on, pray?"

"I don't know what YOU'LL live on," replied he. "_I_ shall live as I
always have."

"A beggar!" she exclaimed. "I--married to a beggar." She burst into
tears. "How men take advantage of a woman alone! If my son had been
near me! But there's surely some law to protect me. Yes, I'm sure
there is. Oh, I'll punish you for having deceived me." Her eyes dried
as she looked at him. "How dare you sit there? How dare you face me,
you miserable fraud!"

Early in her acquaintance with him she had discovered that determining
factors in his character were sensitiveness about his origin and
sensitiveness about his social position. On this knowledge of his
weaknesses was securely based her confidence that she could act as she
pleased toward him. To ease her pains she proceeded to pour out her
private opinion of him--all the disagreeable things, all the insults
she had been storing up.

She watched him as only a woman can watch a man. She saw that his rage
was not dangerous, that she was forcing him into a position where fear
of her revenging herself by disgracing him would overcome anger at the
collapse of his fatuous dreams of wealth. She did not despise him the
more deeply for sitting there, for not flying from the room or trying
to kill her or somehow compelling her to check that flow of insult. She
already despised him utterly; also, she attached small importance to
self-respect, having no knowledge of what that quality really is.

When she grew tired, she became quiet. They sat there a long time in
silence. At last he ran up the white flag of abject surrender by
saying:

"What'll we live on--that's what I'd like to know?"

An eavesdropper upon the preceding violence of upward of an hour would
have assumed that at its end this pair must separate, never to see each
other again voluntarily. But that idea, even as a possibility, had not
entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time; they were
practical people. They knew from the ou