ace. "What do you
mean?" I asked, and I did not speak gently.

She gazed at me without flinching. "And I suppose," she said,
satirically, "you wonder why I--why you--are repellent to me. Haven't
you learned that, while I may have been made into a moral coward, I'm
not a physical coward? Don't bully and threaten. It's useless."

I put my hand strongly on her shoulder--taunts and jeers do not turn
me aside. "What do you mean?" I repeated.

"Take your hand off me," she commanded.

"What did you mean?" I repeated, strongly. "Don't be afraid to answer
me."

She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you,"
said she, "when you began to bluster."

I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position
in which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.

"I am going to leave you," she went on. "I am ready to go at any time.
But if you wish it, I shall not go until my plans are arranged."

"What plans?" I demanded.

"That is no concern of yours."

"You forget that you are my wife," said I, my brain on fire.

"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked so
young and childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not
have held myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so hopeless of
ever being able to win her did she make me feel.

"You are my wife, and you will stay here with me," I reiterated.

"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please,"
was her contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't
you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a
gentleman--but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a
woman against her will."

I drew up a chair so close to her that, to retreat, she was forced to
sit in the broad window seat. Then I seated myself. "By all means, let
us be reasonable," said I. "Now, let me explain my position. I have
heard you and your friends discussing the views of marriage you've
just been expressing. Their views may be right, may be more civilized,
more 'advanced,' than mine. No matter. They are not mine. I hold by
the old standards--and you are my wife--mine. Do you understand?" All
this as tranquilly as if we were discussing fair weather. "And you
will live up to the obligation which the marriage service has put upon
you."

She might have been a marble statue pedestaled in that window seat.

"You married me of your own free will--for you could have protested to