‘Hold your tongue! How dare you talk against my wife! You are not fit to mention her name.’
‘I’ll go to Woking,’ she gasped.
‘You can go to the devil!’ said he, and rang the bell for his bill. She stared at him with a surprise which had eclipsed her anger, while she pulled on her gloves with little sharp twitches. This was a new Frank Crosse to her. As long as a woman gets on very well with a man, she is apt, at the back of her soul, to suspect him of weakness. It is only when she differs from him that she can see the other side, and it always comes as a surprise. She liked him better than ever for the revelation.
‘I’m not joking,’ she whispered, as they went down the stair. ‘I’ll go, as sure as fate.’
He took no notice, but passed on down the street without a word of farewell. When he came to the turning he looked back. She was standing by the curb, with her proud head high in the air, while the manager screamed loudly upon a whistle. A cab swung round a distant corner. Crosse reached her before it did.
‘I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings,’ said he. ‘I spoke too roughly.’
‘Trying to coax me away from Woking,’ she sneered. ‘I’m coming all the same.’
‘That’s your affair,’ said he, as he handed her into the cab.
DANGER
Again the bright little dining-room, with the morning sun gleaming upon the high silver coffee pot and the electro-plated toast-rack—everything the same, down to the plates which Jemima had once again forgotten to warm. Maude, with the golden light playing upon the fringes of her curls, and throwing two little epaulettes of the daintiest pink across her shoulders, sat in silence, glancing across from time to time with interrogative eyes at her husband. He ate his breakfast moodily, for he was very ill at ease. There was a struggle within him, for his conscience was pulling him one way and his instincts the other. Instincts are a fine old conservative force, while conscience is a thing of yesterday, so it is usually safe to prophesy which will sway the other.