“Curiously,” observed Waymark, with a little acidity, “it always is when you have to leave home.”

Julian looked up, and seemed to reach a crisis in his thoughts.

“Waymark,” he began, reddening as he still always did when greatly moved, “I fear I have been behaving very foolishly.  Many a time I have wished to speak out to you plainly, but a sort of delicacy—­a wrong kind of delicacy, I think—­prevented me.  I can’t keep this attitude any longer.  I must tell you how things are going on, and you must give me what help you can.  And perhaps I shall be telling you what you already know?”

“I have suspected.”

“Where is the blame?” Julian broke out, with sudden vehemence.  “I cannot think that ever husband was more patient and more indulgent than I have been.  I have refused her nothing that my means could possibly obtain.  I have given up all the old quiet habits of my life that she mightn’t think I slighted her; I scarcely ever open a book at home, knowing that it irritates her to see me reading; I do my best to amuse her at all times.  How does she reward me?  For ever she grumbles that I can’t perform impossibilities,—­take her to theatres, buy her new dresses, procure for her friends and acquaintances.  My wishes, expressed or understood, weigh with her less than the least of her own caprices.  She wantonly does things which she knows will cause me endless misery.  Her companions are gross and depraved people, who constantly drag her lower and lower, to their own level.  The landlady has told me that, in my absence, women have called to see her who certainly ought not to enter any decent house.  When I entreat her to give up such associates, her only answer is to accuse me of selfishness, since I have friends myself, and yet won’t permit her to have any.  And things have gone from bad to worse.  Several nights of late, when I have got home, she has been away, and has not returned till much after midnight.  Hour after hour I have sat there in the extremest misery, waiting, waiting, feeling as though my brain would burst with its strain!  I have no idea where she goes to.  If I ask, she only retorts by asking me where I spend the nights when I am with you, and laughs contemptuously when I tell her the truth.  Her suspicions and jealousy are incessant, and torture me past endurance.  Once or twice, I confess, I have lost patience, and have spoken angrily, too angrily; then she has accused me of brutal disregard of her sufferings.  It would hurt me less if she pierced me with a knife.  Only this morning there was a terrible scene; she maddened me past endurance by her wretched calumnies—­accusing me of I know not what disgraceful secrets—­and when words burst from me involuntarily, she fell into hysterics, and shrieked till all the people in the house ran up in alarm.  Can you understand what this means to one of my temperament?  To have my private affairs forced upon strangers in this way tortures me with the pains of hell.  I am naturally