"What have you come for?" she cried again, with a voice full of hate. Or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well. He heard only hate.

This time he turned to look at her. The old dagger was drawn in her.

"I wonder," he said, "myself."

Then she recovered herself, and with trembling hand picked up her sewing again. But she still stood at bay, beyond the table. She said nothing.

He, feeling tired, sat down on the chair nearest the door. But he reached for his hat, and kept it on his knee. She, as she stood there unnaturally, went on with her sewing. There was silence for some time.

Curious sensations and emotions went through the man's frame seeming to destroy him. They were like electric shocks, which he felt she emitted against him. And an old sickness came in him again. He had forgotten it. It was the sickness of the unrecognised and incomprehensible strain between him and her.

After a time she put down her sewing, and sat again in her chair.

"Do you know how vilely you've treated me?" she said, staring across the space at him. He averted his face.

Yet he answered, not without irony.

"I suppose so."

"And why?" she cried. "I should like to know why."

He did not answer. The way she rushed in made him go vague.

"Justify yourself. Say why you've been so vile to me. Say what you had against me," she demanded.

"What I HAD against her," he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. He made no answer.

"Accuse me," she insisted. "Say what I've done to make you treat me like this. Say it. You must THINK it hard enough."

"Nay," he said. "I don't think it."

This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her.

"Don't come pretending you love me, NOW. It's too late," she said with contempt. Yet perhaps also hope.

"You might wait till I start pretending," he said.

This enraged her.

"You vile creature!" she exclaimed. "Go! What have you come for?"

"To look at YOU," he said sarcastically.

After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron.

And again his bowels stirred and boiled.

"What have I done! What have I done! I don't know what I've done that he should be like this to me," she sobbed, into her apron. It was childish, and perhaps true. At least it was true from the childish part of her nature. He sat gloomy and uneasy.

She took the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman--a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful.

"Tell me," she challenged. "Tell me! Tell me what I've done. Tell me what you have against me. Tell me."

Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face.

Telling isn't so easy--especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. He couldn't _tell_ what he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.

"You CAN'T," she cried vindictively. "You CAN'T. You CAN'T find anything real to bring against me, though you'd like to. You'd like to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN'T, because you know there isn't anything."

She watched him, watched. And he sat in the chair near the door, without moving.

"You're unnatural, that's what you are," she cried. "You're unnatural.

You're not a man. You haven't got a man's feelings. You're nasty, and cold, and unnatural. And you're a coward. You're a coward. You run away from me, without telling me what you've got against me."

"When you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do," he said, epigrammatic.

She paused a moment.

"Enough of what?" she said. "What have you had enough of? Of me and your children? It's a nice manly thing to say. Haven't I loved you? Haven't I loved you for twelve years, and worked and slaved for you and tried to keep you right? Heaven knows where you'd have been but for me, evil as you are at the bottom. You're evil, that's what it is--and weak. You're too weak to love a woman and give her what she wants: too weak. Unmanly and cowardly, he runs away."

"No wonder," he said.

"No," she cried. "It IS no wonder, with a nature like yours: weak and unnatural and evil. It IS no wonder."

She became quiet--and then started to cry again, into her apron. Aaron waited. He felt physically weak.

"And who knows what you've been doing all these months?" she wept. "Who knows all the vile things you've been doing? And you're the father of my children--the father of my little girls--and who knows what vile things he's guilty of, all these months?"

"I shouldn't let my imagination run away with me," he answered. "I've been playing the flute in the orchestra of one of the theatres in London."

"Ha!" she cried. "It's more than that. Don't think I'm going to believe you. I know you, with your smooth-sounding lies. You're a liar, as you know. And I know you've been doing other things besides play a flute in an orchestra. You!--as if I don't know you. And then coming crawling back to me with your lies and your pretense. Don't think I'm taken in."

"I should be sorry," he said.

"Coming crawling back to me, and expecting to be forgiven," she went on.

"But no--I don't forgive--and I can't forgive--never--not as long as I live shall I forgive what you've done to me."

"You can wait till you're asked, anyhow," he said.

"And you can wait," she said. "And you shall wait." She took up her sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly. Anyone glancing in would have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment. He, too, feeling physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the scene.

Again she suddenly burst into tears, weeping bitterly.

"And the children," she sobbed, rocking herself with grief and chagrin.

"What have I been able to say to the children--what have I been able to tell them?"

"What HAVE you told them?" he asked coldly.

"I told them you'd gone away to work," she sobbed, laying her head on her arms on the table. "What else could I tell them? I couldn't tell them the vile truth about their father. I couldn't tell THEM how evil you are." She sobbed and moaned.

He wondered what exactly the vile truth would have been, had she _started_ to tell it. And he began to feel, coldly and cynically, that among all her distress there was a luxuriating in the violent emotions of the scene in hand, and the situation altogether.

Then again she became quiet, and picked up her sewing. She stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. Then she looked up at him--a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. He turned his face aside.