“You forget,” says he coldly, “that you are married to me.  It is not so simple a matter as you seem to imagine for a wife to throw off her marriage yoke.”

“Yoke!  What a good word that is!” says Tita, with the air of one making a discovery.  Then lightly, “Pouf!  Nonsense!  I’ll show you how easy it is!  And as for that——­” Again her mood changes.  “Don’t go in for that sort of thing,” says she contemptuously.  “Be honest with me now, at the last.  You know you will be as glad to get rid of me, as I shall be to be rid of you.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Rylton slowly.  His eyes are on the ground.  “I have not said I shall be glad to get rid of you.”

“No, I have said it for you.  I have befriended you to the very end; and if you will be a hypocrite, why—­be it!" cries she gaily.

She throws up her hands with an airy little gesture, full of grace, and anger, and something else difficult to describe, but that certainly is devoid of any sort of mirth.

“Hypocrite or not, remember this,” says Maurice, “it is you who have decided on a separation.”

“Yes; I—­I.”  She bursts out laughing. “‘Alone I did it!’ To-day I set you free!”

“Free!”

“Ah, not so free as I would make you!” shaking her head.

He looks at her.

_ “You_ are honest, at all events,” says he bitterly; then, after a moment, “You approve, then, on the step you are taking?”

Tita makes a gesture of impatience.

“What will you have?” says she.  “What do you find fault with now?  Have I not behaved well?  Have I not behaved beautifully?  I stayed with you as long as I had any money—­the money for which you gave me your—­title.  I cannot flatter myself that you gave me more than that for it.  Probably you gave me too much.  And so now, when the money is gone, the bargain is off, and”—­with a shrug of her shoulders, and the saucy glance of a naughty child from under her long lashes—­"I am off too!  Isn’t that being good?”

“Have you no charity?” says he.  A dark red flush has crimsoned his forehead.  “What a character you give me!  Do you think I have no heart?”

“Oh, your heart!” says she gaily.  “I don’t think you need to be unhappy about it.  It will do.  You say I am honest, and one thing honestly I do regret, that I should have unwittingly tempted you to marry me because of my money—­when now it has all dropped overboard.  If I had only known how you regarded it, I——­”

“That infernal money!” says he violently.

There is almost a groan in his voice.  His eyes are fixed upon her; he is wondering at her.  What a child she looks in her pretty frock!  What an unreasonable child!  But what a charm in the angry eyes of her, the defiance of her whole air!  There is something that maddens him in the scornful shrug of her dainty shoulders.

“Oh yes—­yes—­of course!” says she, bringing the little disdainful shrug into full requisition now.  “No wonder you abuse it, poor thing! But for that ‘infernal money,’ you would never have dreamed of marrying me, and now that it is gone—­gone——­” She pauses.  “Oh,” sharply, “I am glad it is gone!  It opens for me a way to leave you!”