There are women who pry into the smallest details of a man's privacy. Farquharson's dressing-room even was not his own. In certain moods Dora discovered that the angle of his looking-glass pleased her better than her own; short of actually locking the door against her, he was never secure from interruption even there. She had developed a thousand whims and fancies since her marriage. She had her own boudoir and drawing-room, and a little sanctum on the stairs which she called her library, where she began to write many letters which were never finished, and to grapple with accounts which were always thrown aside a moment later. Farquharson, unaccustomed to women's society, never once thought of forbidding her to invade his own large and austerely furnished study at the back of the house; it was not until returning unexpectedly one day he found her rummaging amongst some papers on the table that he spoke to her with unusual severity.
"You have your own room, Dora; kindly keep there. I can't allow you to come here. There are papers of importance which mustn't be touched. What's that you've got crumpled up in your hand? It looks like—why, these are some notes Blair made for me this morning. How did you manage to get hold of them?"
"It's perfectly absurd that Mr. Blair should be allowed to come in here and go out as he likes even if he is your secretary, when you forbid your own wife to come in," said Dora angrily. "Stupid old notes, I'm sure I don't want them; I brought in papers of my own, and I suppose they've got mixed up, somehow. They're written on just the same sort of paper as Louise's bill. How on earth was I to know the difference? Besides, anyway it's absurd to make such a fuss about a trifle like that. If I did happen to glance at your dull notes and see a word or two, who has a better right than I to read them, after all?"
Farquharson smoothed out the paper and glanced down it.
"There's nothing that matters in this as it happens. Blair's quite a careful boy; he would never leave out anything really important. But we are rather busy people, Dora, he and I, and he has his own way of arranging things. He's complained to me before now that they're upset and made disorderly by your coming in. Now, I don't suppose, for instance, that you've the smallest notion where you got this from. Try and tax your memory, and put it back in exactly the same place."
"How absurd, how maddening you are!" said Dora, fuming. "What on earth does it matter where the stupid old things come from?" She tore the paper into a dozen pieces and flung them down, white with rage. "You shut me out from everything. What's the good of being the wife of a man in your position if you keep everything so secret? I'm the same as yourself; I've a right to know everything that you know. I know there is some big intrigue going on at this very moment between England and—well, you know which foreign Power better than I; all the newspapers are hinting at it—anybody would give anything to get hold of a little private knowledge about it. But here you are keeping it all to yourself, when it's my right to know, when you ought to confide in me. It's hateful, it's despicable, it's absolutely lowering; no wife in the world was ever treated so cruelly as you treat me."
Farquharson sighed hopelessly.
"We had better understand each other once and for all. I should have thought that you, the daughter of a man who, in the past, was once Colonial Minister, would have understood matters without need of explanation. With an ordinary wife things may be different, I don't know. The wife of a man holding my office must be content to know neither more nor less than the rest of the world about the work he is engaged in. A man's political and domestic life are absolutely apart. We have a lot of years before us, Dora, to live out side by side. This point must be made clear now. You must submit to me utterly in this; in everything else I give you your own way, so far as is compatible with common sense. It seems to me a monstrous thing that you should even contemplate the possibility of my being a spy to satisfy your curiosity. Leave my room now, at once, and remember that I put you on your honour never to enter it again without permission."
"How dare you? how dare you?" cried Dora, catching her breath hysterically. "It's my right, it's my due, to go where I like and do as I choose. I won't be shut out of your life like this. You owe everything to me, and this is your gratitude. Taorna—who cares twopence-halfpenny about Taorna and what's done there? If I hadn't pleaded with and begged my father to give you some place in the Ministry, do you think you'd be there now? If you hadn't married me you would have been nowhere and done nothing. And what have I gained through marriage with you? I was happier before. People loved me and admired me. You never give me a word of love or admiration. You go out with me—yes, because you've got to; because it's to your advantage to show me off at parties. But you never even notice my new gowns; you never even take the trouble to pay me one of the compliments I was surfeited with, till I met you. I might be—why, I might be just like anybody else the way you treat me; not a woman of importance, a woman with wealth and charm, and all the rest of it—who expects to hear a trumpery secret now and again, as her right, and is grudged even that."
She stopped for want of breath, and caught at the table for support.