’What kind of help?  Of course, I shall see that the house goes on as usual.’

’Then it’s quite certain you will have no time left for a “professional career".’

’If I understand you, you mean that you don’t wish me to have any time for it.’

Harvey still smiled, though he could not conceal his nervousness.

‘I’m afraid it comes to that.’

So little had Alma expected such a declaration, that she gazed at him in frank surprise.

‘Then you are going to oppose me in everything?’

‘I hope not.  In that case we should do much better to say good-bye.’

The new tone perplexed her, and a puzzled interest mingled with the lofty displeasure of her look.

‘Please let us understand each other.’  She spoke with demonstrative calmness.  ‘Are we talking on equal terms, or is it master and servant?’

‘Husband and wife, Alma, that’s all.’

‘With a new meaning in the words.’

’No; a very old one.  I won’t say the oldest, for I believe there was a time when primitive woman had the making of man in every sense, and somehow knocked a few ideas into his head; but that was very long ago.’

‘If I could be sure of your real meaning ——.’  She made an irritated gesture.  ’How are we going to live?  You speak of married people in lodging-houses.  I don’t know much about them, happily, but I imagine the husband talks something like this —­ though in more intelligible language.’

’I dare say he does —­ poor man.  He talks more plainly, because he has never put himself in a false position —­ has never played foolishly with the facts of life.’

Alma sat reflecting.

‘Didn’t I tell you in my letter,’ she said at length, ’that I was quite willing to make a change, on one condition?’

‘An impossible condition.’

’You treat me very harshly.  How have I deserved it?  When I wrote that, I really wished to please you.  Of course, I knew you were dissatisfied with me, and it made me dissatisfied with myself.  I wrote in a way that ought to have brought me a very different answer.  Why do you behave as if I were guilty of something —­ as if I had put myself at your mercy?  You never found fault with me —­ you even encouraged me to go on ——­’

Her choking voice made Harvey look at her in apprehension, and the look stopped her just as she was growing hysterical.

‘You are right about my letter,’ he said, very gravely and quietly.  ’It ought to have been in a kinder tone.  It would have been, but for those words you won’t explain.’

’You think it needs any explanation that I dislike the thought of Hughie going to Mrs. Abbott’s?’

‘Indeed I do.  I can’t imagine a valid ground for your objection.’

There was a word on Alma’s tongue, but her lips would not utter it.  She turned very pale under the mental conflict.  Physical weakness, instead of overcoming her spirit, excited it to a fresh effort of resistance.