“Heavens, how sleepy I am!  No wonder either!  Late going to bed last night and up so early this morning.”

After a moment he began to yawn, and almost before he could have been aware of it he had closed his eyes.  At the next moment he was asleep.

It was a painful, almost a hideous sleep.  His cheeks swelled and sank; his lips parted, he was breathing heavily, and sometimes gaping like a carp out of water.

I could not detach my eyes from his face, which, without eyes to relieve it, seemed to be almost repulsive now.  It would be difficult to describe my sensations.  I felt dreadfully humiliated.  Even my personal pride was wounded.  I remembered what Father Dan had said about husband and wife being one flesh, and told myself that this was what I belonged to, what belonged to me—­this! Then I tried to reproach and reprove myself, but in order to do so I had to turn my eyes away.

Our road to Blackwater lay over the ridge of a hill much exposed to the wind from the south-west.  When we reached this point the clouds seemed to roll up from the sea like tempestuous battalions.  Torrential rain fell on the car and came dripping in from the juncture of the landaulette roof.  Some of it fell on the sleeper and he awoke with a start.

“Damn—­”

He stopped, as if, caught in guilt, and began to apologise again.

“Was I asleep?  I really think I must have been.  Stupid, isn’t it?  Excuse me.”

He blinked his eyes as if to empty them of sleep, looked me over for a moment or two in silence, and then said with a smile which made me shudder: 

“So you and I are man and wife, my dear!”

I made no answer, and, still looking fixedly at me, he said: 

“Well, worse things might have happened after all—­what do you think?”

Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust.  Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance.

“Do you know you’re charming, my dear, really charming!”

That stung me, and made me shudder, I don’t know why, unless it was because the words gave me the sense of having been used before to other women.  I turned my eyes away again.

“Don’t turn away, dear.  Let me see those big black eyes of yours.  I adore black eyes.  They always pierce me like a gimlet.”

He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him.  I felt frightened and pushed him off.

“What’s this?” he said, as if surprised.

But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who had had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, he said: 

“Wants to be coaxed, does she?  They all do, bless them!”

Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist, but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.

His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.