Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, 'Well, I
didn't want to waste it!' Didn't want to waste her old carrot water,
and so _ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?"

"It must have been trying."

"I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don't know how many
pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to
eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was
when she said: 'I've looked round the larder,' she said to me, 'and
seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can't_
cook a supper! And _then_ you did!' There! What do you think of
that? The spite of it! 'And _then_ you did!'"

"What did she expect you to live on?" asked Alvina.

"Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap--and
then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort
of woman she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach."

"So overbearing!" said Alvina.

"Oh!" he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. "I didn't
believe my senses. I didn't know such people existed. And her
friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had--these Fabians! Oh, their
eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic
reasons. Oh, you can't imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish
Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I
don't know--"

"Now don't you see her?"

"Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of
cauce."

"And your daughter?"

"Oh, she's the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend's
when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world.
But of _cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn't _know_
me--"

"What a pity!"

"Oh--unbearable!" He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one
finger of which was a green intaglio ring.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Fourteen."

"What is her name?"

"Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud
Callum, the _danseuse_."

Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But
it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances.
On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking
the crumbs of Alvina's sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to
watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen
the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off
in a great dither. Nothing _horrified_ him more than a woman wh