evasions. 'Living in flagrant sin, she says: you and I! She will not
have it; warns me. Heard this day at noon of company at Lakelands.
Jarniman off at once. Are to live in obscurity;--you and I! if
together! Dictates from her death-bed-I suppose her death-bed.'

'Dearest,' Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, 'may we not think that
she may be right?'

'An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she
is only a limpet of vitality, with drugs for blood, hanging-on to blast
the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days,
calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I lay
--see myself lying! wasting! Think what you can good of her, by all
means! From her bed! despatches that Jarniman to me from her bedside,
with the word, that she cannot in her conscience allow--what imposition
was it I practised? . . . flagrant sin?--it would have been an
infinitely viler . . . . She is the cause of suffering enough: I bear
no more from her; I've come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands:
she has taken one of her hatreds to the place. She might have written,
might have sent me a gentleman, privately. No: it must be done in
dramatic style-for effect: her confidential--lawyer?--doctor?--butler!
Perhaps to frighten me:--the boy she knew, and--poor soul! I don't mean
to abuse her: but such conduct as this is downright brutal. I laugh at
it, I snap my fingers. I can afford to despise it. Only I do say it
deserves to be called abominable.'

'Victor, has she used a threat?'

'Am I brought to listen to any of her threats!--Funny thing, I 'm certain
that woman never can think of me except as the boy she knew. I saw her