ing you for?
Work, interesting work--that's what I need to make me happy, to make
you happy! Without it, I shall be miserable, and you will be miserable
in having a miserable wife about you--and all our years together will
be years of misery. So you see what a lot I'm fighting for: work,
development, happiness!--the happiness of all our married years!"

"That's only a delusion. For your sake, and my sake, I've got to stand
firm."

"Then you will not let me?"

"I will not."

She stared palely at his square, adamantine face.

"Arnold!" she breathed. "Arnold!--do you know what you're trying to
do?"

"I am trying to save you from yourself!"

"You're trying to break my will across yours," she cried a little
wildly. "You're trying to crush me into the iron mould of your idea of
a woman. You're trying to kill me--yes, to kill me."

"I am trying to save you!" he repeated, his temper breaking its frail
leash. "Your ideas are all wrong--absurd--insane!"

"Please don't be angry, Arnold!" she pleaded.

"How can I help it, when you won't listen to reason! When you are so
perversely obstinate!"

"I'm not obstinate," she cried breathlessly, holding one of his hands
tightly in both her own. "I'm just trying to cling as hard as I can to
life--to our happiness. Please give me a chance, Arnold! Please,
please!"

"Confound such obstinate wrong-headedness!" he exploded. "No, I tell
you! No! And that settles it!"

She shrank back.

"Oh!" she cried. Her breast began to rise and fall tumultuously, and
her cheeks slowly to redden. "Oh!" she cried again. Then her words
leaped hotly out: "Oh, you bigot!"

"If to stand by what I know is right, and to save you from making a
fool of yourself, is to be a bigot--then I'm a bigot all right, and I
thank the God that made me one!"

"And you think you are going to save me from myself?" she demanded.

He stepped nearer, and towering over her, he took hold of her
shoulders in a powerful grasp and looked down upon her dominantly.

"I know I am! I am going to make you exactly what I want you to be!"

Her eyes flamed back up into his.

"Because you are the stronger?"

"Because I am the stronger--and because I am right," he returned
grimly.

"I admit that you are the superior brute," she said with fierce
passion. "But you will never break me to your wishes!"

"And I tell you I will!"

"And I tell you you will not!"

There was a strange and new fire in her eyes.

"What do you