“Dahlia, do be reasonable!  I can’t leave you like this.  We shall be separated for some time.  And what a miserable fire you’ve got here!  You have agreed with me that we are acting for the best.  It’s very hard on me I try what I can to make you comf—­happy; and really, to see you leaving your dinner to get cold!  Your hands are like ice.  The meat won’t be eatable.  You know I’m not my own master.  Come, Dahly, my darling!”

He gently put his hand to her chin, and then drew away the handkerchief.

Dahlia moaned at the exposure of her tear-stained face, she turned it languidly to the wall.

“Are you ill, my dear?” he asked.

Men are so considerately practical!  He begged urgently to be allowed to send for a doctor.

But women, when they choose to be unhappy, will not accept of practical consolations!  She moaned a refusal to see the doctor.

Then what can I do for her? he naturally thought, and he naturally uttered it.

“Say good-bye to me,” he whispered.  “And my pretty one will write to me.  I shall reply so punctually!  I don’t like to leave her at Christmas; and she will give me a line of Italian, and a little French—­mind her accents, though!—­and she needn’t attempt any of the nasty German—­kshrra-kouzzra-kratz!—­which her pretty lips can’t do, and won’t do; but only French and Italian.  Why, she learnt to speak Italian!  ’La dolcezza ancor dentro me suona.’  Don’t you remember, and made such fun of it at first?  ‘Amo zoo;’ ‘no amo me?’ my sweet!”

This was a specimen of the baby-lover talk, which is charming in its season, and maybe pleasantly cajoling to a loving woman at all times, save when she is in Dahlia’s condition.  It will serve even then, or she will pass it forgivingly, as not the food she for a moment requires; but it must be purely simple in its utterance, otherwise she detects the poor chicanery, and resents the meanness of it.  She resents it with unutterable sickness of soul, for it is the language of what were to her the holiest hours of her existence, which is thus hypocritically used to blind and rock her in a cradle of deception.  If corrupt, she maybe brought to answer to it all the same, and she will do her part of the play, and babble words, and fret and pout deliciously; and the old days will seem to be revived, when both know they are dead; and she will thereby gain any advantage she is seeking.

But Dahlia’s sorrow was deep:  her heart was sound.  She did not even perceive the opportunity offered to her for a wily performance.  She felt the hollowness of his speech, and no more; and she said, “Good-bye, Edward.”

He had been on one knee.  Springing cheerfully to his feet, “Good-bye, darling,” he said.  “But I must see her sit to table first.  Such a wretched dinner for her!” and he mumbled, “By Jove, I suppose I shan’t get any at all myself!” His watch confirmed it to him that any dinner which had been provided for him at the Club would be spoilt.