He reflected deeply, his hands in his trousers pockets.

“I think I’m taking all this sermon peaceably enough,” he barked savagely.

Again he had that disaffected look from her; she seemed to analyse him coldly.

“It isn’t a sermon.  Go on grumbling and nagging and grudging every day, if you want to.  I haven’t asked you to refrain.  I’ve merely explained that, as a result of your husbandly behaviour, you’ve ceased to attract me, and I don’t want to live with you—­intimately—­again.”

He caught her arm.  “Look here!  I know.  You’ve been to some of these beastly Suffragette meetings.”

She laughed scornfully.

“Suffragette!  Don’t be an ass, dear!”

“No,” he said under his breath, regarding her, “you haven’t.  Hanged if I know what you have been doing.”

“I told you.  Getting my youth back.  Do you know what a very pretty young girl feels like?  Did you know what I used to feel like when you were engaged to me?  Like a queen with a crowd of courtiers at her orders and you the most courtier-like of them all!  You used to hang on every word I said and promise me heaven and earth, and my every look was law.  Oh! the power a pretty young girl feels in herself!”

Standing on tiptoe she looked into the glass, touched her fluffs of hair and the purple earrings with tender finger-tips.

“I’ve got it back,” she said with a thrill.  “I feel it flowing back; the power one has through being pretty and magnetic.  If a woman’s tired out she can’t be magnetic.  But I’ve got it all again—­and more.  I wonder if a man can ever understand the pleasure of having it?  It’s coming to me again just as I had it fresh and unconquered in those dear old days when you were at my feet.”

He spoke in a sort of beaten amazement.  “If you want me again at your feet—­”

“Thank you, I don’t.  I’ll never pay the price again.  Never!  Never!”

“Then whom do you want?  Do you mean there’s anyone else?  By God! if there is—­”

As she saw his fury she could laugh.  “There isn’t.”

“Let’s sit down again,” he said more quietly; “this isn’t threshed out yet.”

“If more discussion gives you any pleasure I’ll discuss.  But what I said I meant.  I’m not glad to see you; I’m sorry.  You mean the breaking-up of household peace for me again.  Men would be surprised, if they knew how many wives are glad to see their husbands go.”

“Take care you don’t drive me into going for good.  Your way of treating a man is pretty dangerous.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied with a convincing gentleness, “that I shouldn’t care if you did go.  I’d have the children.”

“Do you mean they’ve been more to you than I have?”

“What haven’t they been to me?” Her face was soft.  “You can’t think—­you’ve never troubled to know—­how kind children are.”

“Once I was first with you.”

She quoted with irreverent glee:  “’And they that were first shall be last.’”