wonder what he wanted; she had observed that he
always felt kindly disposed towards people when he was asking a favour
of them.

"And, by-the-bye," he pursued, turning his back to the mirror and
craning his neck to see the set of his coat-tails, "you might do
something for me when you are out. Wilberforce is worrying for his
money. It's damned cheek. I sent him a large order for whisky the
other day to keep him quiet, but it hasn't answered. I wish you would
go and see him--go with a long face, like a good girl, and tell him
I'm only waiting till I get my own accounts in. Have a little chat
with him, you know, and all that sort of thing--lay yourself out to
please him, in fact. He's a gentlemanly fellow for a wine-merchant,
and has a weakness for pretty women. If you go, I'll take my dick
he'll not trouble us with a bill for the next six months."

"It seems to me," said Beth in her quietest way, "that when a husband
asks his wife to make use of her personal appearance or charm of
manner to obtain a favour for him from another man, he is requiring
something of her which is not at all consistent with her
self-respect."

Dan stopped short with his hand up to his moustache to twist it, his
bonhomie cast aside in a moment. "Oh, damn your self-respect!" he said
brutally. "Your cursed book-talk is enough to drive a man to the
devil. Anybody but you, with your 'views' and 'opinions' and fads and
fancies generally, would be only too glad to oblige a good husband in
such a small matter. And surely to God _I_ know what is consistent
with your self-respect! _I_ should be the last person in the world to
allow you to compromise it! But your eyes will be opened, and the
cursed conceit taken out of you some day, madam, I can tell you!
You'll live to regret the way you've treated me, I promise you!"

"My eyes have been pretty well opened as it is," Beth answered. "You
left the key in the surgery door last night."

"And you went in there _spying_ on me, did you? That was honourable!"
he exclaimed in a voice of scorn.

"I heard the wretched creature you had been vivisecting crying in its
agony, and I thought it was a human being, and went to see," Beth
answered, speaking in the even, dispassionate way which she had found
such an effectual check on Dan's vulgar bluster.

"You killed that dog, then!" he exclaimed, turning on her savagely.
"How dare you?"

Beth rose from the writing-table, and went and stretched herself out
on th