If she succeeded in escaping from her prison, whither should she go?  Her mother would receive her, but it was impossible to go to Wanley, to live near the Manor.  Impossible, too, to take refuge with Stella.  If she fled and hid herself in some other part of London, how was life to be supported?  But there were graver obstacles.  Openly to flee from her husband was to subject herself to injurious suspicions—­it might be, considering Mutimer’s character, to involve Hubert in some intolerable public shame.  Or, if that worst extremity were avoided’, would it not be said that she had deserted her husband because he had suddenly become poor?

That last thought brought the blood to her cheeks.

But to live with him after this, to smear over a deadly wound and pretend it was healed, to read hourly in his face the cowardly triumph over her weakness, to submit herself—­Oh, what rescue from this hideous degradation!  She went to the window, as if it had been possible to escape by that way; she turned again and stood moaning, with her hands about her head.  When was the worst to come in this life so long since bereft of hope, so forsaken of support from man or God?  The thought of death came to her; she subdued the tumult of her agony to weigh it well Whom would she wrong by killing herself?  Herself, it might be; perchance not even death would be sacred against outrage.

She heard a neighbouring clock strike five, and shortly after her husband entered the room.  Had she looked at him she would have seen an inexplicable animation in his face.  He paced the floor once or twice in silence, then asked in a hard voice, though the tone was quite other than before: 

‘Will you tell me what it was you talked of that day in the wood?’

She did not reply.

’I suppose by refusing to speak you confess that you dare not let me know?’

Physical torture could not have wrung a word from her.  She felt her heart surge with hatred.

He went to the cupboard in which food was kept, took out a loaf of bread, and cut a slice.  He ate it, standing before the window.  Then he cleared the table and sat down to write a letter; it occupied him for hall-an-hour.  When it was finished, he put it in his pocket and began again to pace the room.

‘Are you going to, sit like that all night?’ he asked suddenly.

She drew a deep sigh and rose from her seat.  He saw that she no longer thought of escaping him.  She began to make preparations for tea.  As helpless in his hands as though he had purchased her in a slave market, of what avail to sit like a perverse child?  The force of her hatred warned her to keep watch lest she brought herself to his level.  Without defence against indignities which were bitter as death, by law his chattel, as likely as not to feel the weight of his hand if she again roused his anger, what remained but to surrender all outward things to unthinking