“I have already told you that your wife’s manners are perfect. If you assume that my judgment is not to be relied on, there is no use in our talking to one another at all. What I wish to know is this. Admitting, for the sake of avoiding argument, that I am right in my view of the matter, did your wife behave as she did by your orders, or of her own free will?”
“Most certainly not by my orders,” said Adrian, angrily. “I am not in the habit of giving her orders. If I were, they should not be of that nature. If Aurélie treated you with politeness, I do not see what more you had any right to expect. She admired you greatly when she first saw you; but I know she was hurt by your avoidance of her after our engagement became known, even when you were in the same room with her.”
“She has not the least right to feel aggrieved on that account. It was your business to have introduced her to me as the lady you intended to marry.”
“I did not feel encouraged to do so by what had passed between us on the subject,” said Adrian, coldly.
“Well we need not go over that again. I merely wish to ask you whether you expect me to make any further concessions. You have lately acquired a habit of accusing me of various shortcomings in my duty to you; and I do not wish you to impute any estrangement between your wife and me to my neglect. I have called on her; and she did not ask me to call again. I endeavored to treat her as one of my family: she politely insisted on the most distant acquaintanceship. I asked her to call on me and she excused herself. Could I have done more?”
“I think you might, in the first instance.”
“Can I do more now?”
“You can answer that yourself better than I can.”
I fear so, since you seem unable to give me a straightforward or civil answer. However, if you have nothing to suggest, please let it be understood in future that I was perfectly willing to receive your wife, that I made the usual advances, and that they came to nothing through her action, not through mine.
“Very well, though I do not think the point will excite much interest in the world.
“Thank you, Adrian. I think T will go now. I hope you treat your wife in a more manly and considerate way than you have begun to treat me of late.”
“She does not complain, mother. And I never intended to treat you inconsiderately. But you sometimes attack me in a fashion which paralyses my constant wish to conciliate you. I am sorry you have not succeeded better with Aurélie.”
“So am I. I did not think she was long enough married to have lost the wish to please you. Perhaps, though, she thought she she would please you best by holding aloof from me.”
“You are full of unjust suspicion. The fact is just the contrary. She knows that I have a horror of estrangements in families.”
“Then she doesn’t study very hard to please you.”
Adrian reddened and was silent.
“And you? Are you still as infatuated I as you were last year?”
“Yes, “ said Adrian defiantly, with his cheeks burning. “I love her more than ever. I am longing to be at home with her at this moment. When she goes away, I shall be miserable. Of all the lies invented by people who never felt love, the lie of marriage extinguishing love is the falsest, as it is the most worldly and cynical.”
Mrs. Herbert looked at him in surprise and doubt. “You are an extraordinary boy,” she said. “Why then do you not go with her to the Continent?”
“She does not wish me to,” said Herbert shortly, averting his face, and pretending to resume his work.
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Herbert. “And you will not cross her, even in that?”
“She is quite right to wish me to stay here. I should only be wasting time; and I should be out of place at a string of concerts. I will stay behind — if I can.”
“If you can?”
“Yes, mother, if I can. But I believe I shall rejoin her before she is absent a week. I may have been an indifferent son; and I know I am a bad husband; but I am the most infatuated lover in the world.”
“Yet you say you are a bad husband!”
“Not to her. But I fall short in my duty to myself.”
Mrs. Herbert laughed. “Do not let that trouble you,” she said. “Time will cure you of that fault, if it exists anywhere but in your imagination. I never knew a man who failed in taking care of himself. Goodbye, Adrian.”
“Goodbye, mother.”
“What an ass I am to speak of my feelings to her!” he said to himself, when she was gone. “Well, well: at least if she does not understand them, she does not pretend to do so, she has not sympathy enough for that. She did not even ask to see my pictures. That would have hurt me once. At present I have exchanged the burden of disliking my mother the heavier one of loving my wife.” He sighed, and resumed his work in spite of the fading light.
CHAPTER II
One moonlit night, in an empty street in Paris, a door suddenly opened; and three persons were thrust violently out with much scuffling and cursing. One of them was a woman, elegantly dressed, but flushed with drink and excitement. The others were a loose-jointed, large-boned, fair young Englishman of about eighteen or twenty, and a slim Frenchman with pointed black moustaches and a vicious expression. The Englishman, like the woman, was heated and intoxicated: his companion was angry, but had not lost his selfcontrol. The moment they passed the threshold, the door was slammed; and the younger man, without heeding the torrent of foul utterance to which the woman promptly betook herself, began kicking the panels furiously.
“Bah!” said the woman, recovering herself with a shrill laugh. “Come, Anatole.” And she drew away her compatriot, who was watching the door-kicking process derisively.
“Hallo!” shouted the Englishman, hurrying after them. “Hallo, you! This lady stays with me, if you please. I should think that she has had about enough of you, you damned blackleg, since she has been pitched out of a gambling hell on your account. You had better clear out unless you want your neck broken — and if you were anything like a fair match for me, I’d break it as soon as look at you.”
“What does he say, Nata “ whispered the Frenchman, keeping his eye on the other as if he guessed his meaning.
The woman. with an insolent snap of her fingers, made a perfunctory translation of as much of the Englishman’s words as she understood.
“Look, you, little one, said the Frenchman, advancing to within a certain distance of his adversary, “the night air is not right for you. I would counsel you to go home and put yourself to bed, lest I should have to give your nurse the trouble of carrying you thither.”
“You advise me to go to bed, do you? I’ll let you see all about that.” retorted the young man, posing himself clumsily in attitude of an English pugilist, and breathing scorn at his opponent. Anatole instantly dealt him a kick beneath the nose which made him stagger. The pain of it was so intolerable that he raised his right hand to his mouth. The moment he thus uncovered his body, the Frenchman turned swiftly, and, looking back at his adversary over his shoulder, lashed out his toe with the vigor of a colt, and sent it into the pit of the young man’s stomach, flinging him into the roadway, supine, gasping, and all but insensible.
“Ha!” said Anatole, panting after this double feat. “Prrr’lotte! So much for thy English boxer, Nata.”
“Cre’matin! What a devil thou art, Anatole. Come, let us save ourselves.”
A minute later the street was again as quiet, and, except for the motionless body