t my wife alone," he muttered. "To dare--my wife!"

"I'm afraid it's a little late in the day to begin now," Lady Holme
said. "Society's been laughing over it, and your apparent appreciation
of it, the best part of the season."

"My what?"

"Your apparent enjoyment of the performance."

And then she went quietly out of the room and shut the door gently
behind her. But directly the door was shut she became another woman. Her
mouth was distorted, her eyes shone, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom,
locked herself in, threw herself down on the bed and pressed her face
furiously against the coverlet.

The fact that she had spoken at last to her husband of the insult she
had been silently enduring, the insult he had made so far more bitter
than it need have been by his conduct, had broken down something within
her, some wall of pride behind which had long been gathering a flood
of feeling. She cried now frantically, with a sort of despairing rage,
cried and crushed herself against the bed, beating the pillows with her
hands, grinding her teeth.

What was the use of it all? What was the use of being beautiful, of
being young, rich? What was the use of having married a man she had
loved? What was the use? What was the use?

"What's the use?" she sobbed the words out again and again.

For the man was a fool, Fritz was a fool. She thought of him at that
moment as half-witted. For he saw nothing, nothing. He was a blind man
led by his animal passions, and when at last he was forced to see, when
she came and, as it were, lifted his eyelids with her fingers, and said
to him, "Look! Look at what has been done to me!" he could only be angry
for himself, because the insult had attained him, because she happened
to be his wife. It seemed to her, while she was crying there, that
stupidity combined with egoism must have the power to kill even that
vital, enduring thing, a woman's love. She had begun to idealise Fritz,
but how could she go on idealising him? And she began for the first time
really to understand--or to begin to understand--that there actually was
something within her which was hungry, unsatisfied, something which was
not animal but mental, or was it spiritual?--something not sensual, not
cerebral, which cried aloud for sustenance. And this something did not,
could never, cry to Fritz. It knew he could not give it what it wanted.
Then to whom did it cry? She did not know.

Presently she grew calmer and sat upon the