d looking gloomily into the fireplace.

"Have I annoyed you, Dan?" Beth asked at last.

He walked to the door, stood a moment with his back to her, then
turned and looked at her. "Annoyed is not the word," he said. "You
have wounded me deeply."

He opened the door as he spoke, and went out. When he had gone Beth
sat and suffered. She could not bear to hurt him, she was not yet
sufficiently brutalised for that; so she said no more on the subject,
but patiently endured the long lonely night watches, and the after
companionship which had in it all that is most trying and offensive to
a refined and delicate woman.

* * * * *

After that first display of jealousy Beth discovered that her husband
pried upon her continually. He was very high and mighty on the subject
of women spying upon men, but there seemed no meanness he would not
compass in order to spy upon a woman. He had duplicate keys to her
drawers and boxes, and rummaged through all her possessions when she
went out. One day she came upon him standing before her wardrobe,
feeling in the pockets of her dresses, and on another occasion she
discovered him unawares in her bedroom, picking little scraps of paper
out of the slop-pail and piecing them together to see what she had
been writing. To Beth, accustomed to the simple, honourable principles
of her parents, and to the confidence with which her mother had left
her letters lying about, because she knew that not one of her children
would dream of looking at them, Dan's turpitude was revolting. On
those occasions when she caught him, he did not hear her enter the
room, and she made her escape without disturbing him, and stole up to
her secret chamber, and sat there, suffering from one of those attacks
of nausea and shivering which came upon her in moments of deep
disgust.

After that she had an attack of illness which kept her in bed for a
week; but even then, feverish and suffering as she was, and yearning
for the coolness and liberty of a room to herself, she dared not
suggest such a thing for fear of a scene.

While she was still in bed Dan brought her some letters one morning.
He made no remark when he gave them to her, but he had opened them as
usual, and stood watching her curiously while she read them. The first
she looked at was from her sister Bernadine, and had a black border
round it; but she took it out of its envelope unsuspiciously, and read
the words that were upper