‘What a charming creature!’ he exclaimed involuntarily.

‘That is what everybody thinks, except her husband,’ Winifred laughed.

‘Is he blind then?’ asked John with his cloistral naivete.

‘Blind?  No, love is blind.  Marriage is never blind.’

The bitterness in her tone pierced John.  He felt vaguely the passing of some icy current from unknown seas of experience.  Cecilia’s voice soared out enchantingly.

‘Then, marriage must be deaf,’ he said, ’or such music as that would charm it.’

She smiled sadly.  Her smile was the tricksy play of moonlight among clouds of faery.

‘You have never been married,’ she said simply.

‘Do you mean that you, too, are neglected?’ something impelled him to exclaim.

‘Worse,’ she murmured.

‘It is incredible!’ he cried.  ‘You!’

‘Hush!  My husband will hear you.’

Her warning whisper brought him into a delicious conspiracy with her.  ‘Which is your husband?’ he whispered back.

’There!  Near the casement, standing gazing open-mouthed at Cecilia.  He always opens his mouth when she sings.  It is like two toys moved by the same wire.’

He looked at the tall, stalwart, ruddy-haired Anglo-Saxon.  ’Do you mean to say he—?’

‘I mean to say nothing.’

‘But you said—­’

‘I said “worse".’

‘Why, what can be worse?’

She put her hand over her face.  ‘I am ashamed to tell you.’  How adorable was that half-divined blush!

‘But you must tell me everything.’  He scarcely knew how he had leapt into this role of confessor.  He only felt they were ’moved by the same wire’.

Her head drooped on her breast.  ‘He—­beats—­me.’

‘What!’ John forgot to whisper.  It was the greatest shock his recluse life had known, compact as it was of horror at the revelation, shamed confusion at her candour, and delicious pleasure in her confidence.

This fragile, exquisite creature under the rod of a brutal bully!

Once he had gone to a wedding reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—­’a wife-beater’ he called it.  The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly:  this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums.  It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir.  Now that savage weapon recurred to him—­for a lurid instant he saw Winifred’s husband wielding it.  Oh, abomination of his sex!  And did he stand there, in his immaculate evening dress, posing as an English gentleman?  Even so might some gentleman burglar bear through a salon his imperturbable swallow-tail.

Beat a woman!  Beat that essence of charm and purity, God’s best gift to man, redeeming him from his own grossness!  Could such things be?  John Lefolle would as soon have credited the French legend that English wives are sold in Smithfield.  No! it could not be real that this flower-like figure was thrashed.