"Tell _you_!" I repeated. "After what has happened, surely it is
your duty to enlighten _me_."

"You don't see the joke," he said.

"I not only fail to see the joke," I rejoined, "I see something
in your mother's language and your mother's behavior which
justifies me in asking you for a serious explanation."

"My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a
serious explanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the
world that you would expect from me. The idea of taking my mother
seriously!" He burst out laughing again. "My darling, you don't
know how you amuse me."

It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate,
the most refined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the
word--was coarse and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a
sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love for him, it was
impossible to resist. In unutterable distress and alarm I asked
myself, "Is my husband beginning to deceive me? is he acting a
part, and acting it badly, before we have been married a week?" I
set myself to win his confidence in a new way. He was evidently
determined to force his own point of view on me. I determined, on
my side, to accept his point of view.

"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently.
"Will you help me to understand her?"

"It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't