it credible in human nature—­the past borne in mind—­that Mallard had never exceeded a passionless sympathy?  Did not Miriam say distinctly that suspicion had been excited in her by the behaviour of the two when they were in Rome?  Why had he not stayed to question his sister on that point?  As always, he had lost his head, missed the essential, obeyed impulses instead of proceeding on a rational plan.

He worked himself into a sense of being grossly injured.  The shame he had suffered in this morning’s interviews was now a mortification.  What had he to do with vulgar rules and vulgar judgments?  By what right did these people pose as his superiors and look contemptuous rebuke?  His anger concentrated itself on Cecily; the violence of jealousy and the brute instinct of male prerogative plied his brain to frenzy as the minutes dragged on.  Where had she passed the night?  How durst she absent herself from home, and keep him in these tortures of expectation?

At a few minutes past one she came.  The library door was ajar, and he heard her admit herself with a latch-key; she would see his hat and gloves in the hall.  But instead of coming to the library she went straight upstairs; it was Cecily, for he knew her step.  Almost immediately he followed.  She did not stop at the drawing-room; he followed, and came up with her at the bedroom door.  Still she paid no attention, but went in and took off her hat.

“Where have you been since yesterday afternoon?” he asked, when he had slammed the door.

Cecily looked at him with offended surprise—­almost as she might have regarded an insolent servant.

“What right have you to question me in such a tone?”

“Never mind my tone, but answer me.”

“What right have you to question me at all?”

“Every right, so long as you choose to remain in my house.”

“You oblige me to remind you that the house is at least as much mine as yours.  For what am I beholden to you?  If it comes to the bare question of rights between us, I must meet you with arguments as coarse as your own.  Do you suppose I can pretend, now, to acknowledge any authority in you?  I am just as free as you are, and I owe you no account of myself.”

Physical exhaustion had made her incapable of self-control.  She had anticipated anything but such an address as this with which Elgar presented himself.  The insult was too shameless; it rendered impossible the cold dignity she had purposed.

“What do you mean by ’free’?” he asked, less violently.

“Everything that you yourself understand by it.  I am accountable to no one but myself.  If I have allowed you to think that I held the old belief of a woman’s subjection to her husband, you must learn that that is at an end.  I owe no more obedience to you than you do to me.”

“I ask no obedience.  All I want to know is, whether it is possible for us to live under the same roof or not.”