were glad of that excuse for keeping out of my way.  If I was away from home for a day or two, you didn’t even care to ask what I had been doing; that was what proved to me how completely indifferent you had become.  And when you went abroad, what a pretence it was to ask me to come with you!  I knew quite well that you had much rather be without me.  And how did you suppose I should live during your absence?  You never thought about it, never cared to think.  Don’t imagine I am blaming you.  Everything was at an end between us, and which of us could help it?  But it is as well to show you that I am not the cause of all that has happened.  You have no justification whatever for this tone of offence.  It is foolish, childish, unworthy of a woman who claims to think for herself.”

Cecily listened with strange sensations.  She knew that all this had nothing to do with the immediate point at issue, and that it only emphasized the want of nobility in Reuben’s character, but, as he proceeded, there was so much truth in what he attributed to her that, in spite of everything, she could not resist a feeling of culpability.  However little it really signified to her husband, it was undoubtedly true that she had made no effort with herself when she became conscious of indifference towards him.  To preserve love was not in her power, but was he not right in saying that she might have done more, as a wife, to supply his defects?  Knowing him weak, should she not have made it a duty to help him against himself?  Had she not, as he said, virtually “abandoned” him?

Elgar observed her, and recognized the effect of his words.

“Of course,” he pursued, “if you have made up your mind to be released, I have neither the power nor the will to keep you.  But you must deal plainly with me.  You can’t both live here and have ties elsewhere.  I should have thought you would have been the first to recognize that.”

“Of what ties do you speak?”

“I don’t know that you have any; but you say you hold yourself free to form them.”

“If I had done so, I should not be here.”

“Then what objection can you have to telling me where you have been?”

How idle it was, to posture and use grandiose words!  Why did she shrink from the complete submission that her presence here implied?  No amount of self-assertion would do away with the natural law of which he had contemptuously reminded her, the law which distinguishes man and woman, and denies to one what is permitted to the other.

“I passed the night by a sick-bed,” she replied, letting her voice drop into weariness—­“Madeline Denyer’s.”

“Did you go there directly on leaving home?”

“No.”

“Will you tell me where else you went?”

“I went first of all to see Mr. Mallard.  I talked with him for a long time, and he gave me some tea.  Then he came part of the way back with me.  Shall I try and remember the exact spot where he got out of the cab?”