"We're going to stay out till long past his bedtime."

"Are we?"

"There's a moon. It's tophole for motoring. I'm--taking this car out again to-morrow."

"Are you?"

He shot a glance at her and postponed the matter. They drove on fast and far, only turning when the moon was up and stars were in the sky.

They arrived again upon the summit of the great hill, the fringing trees now black in the light of fairy whiteness, before he spoke again of what filled his brain.

He drew up the car and, turning a look of inquiry upon him, she saw him bending towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face. He flung out an arm along the back of the seat, behind her.

"Marie," he said, "I want to ask you something which you can't answer."

"Why ask it, then?"

"Because I'm going to. It's this: where are we two going?"

"You're right," she said slowly, "I can't answer that."

"What's the meaning of this dreadful indifference? This extraordinary indifference?"

"It's not extraordinary; if you'd only believe me it's the indifference thousands of women feel for their husbands; only in our case special circumstances--your absence, mother's money--have made me able to realise it."

"Well, if thousands of women have this indifference, which you say isn't so very extraordinary, for their husbands, what--what's the way all these chaps win these thousands of wives back?"

"They don't."

"But I want to win you back. Here and now, humiliating as it sounds, I declare I'd follow you around on my knees if--if it meant getting you."

"It wouldn't. I'm very sorry. Do you think you love me?"

His hand dropped down heavily on her shoulder.

"Yes!"

"I wish I loved you, but I don't. You--you've tired me out. I suppose that's it."

"Very well, I'll take what you say. But I've another question. Don't you guess where all this is driving me?"

"Don't hold me like that, Osborn."

"I'll only do it a few minutes. Answer my question. What do you expect of me?"

"Absolutely nothing," she owned.

"And you don't care what I do; where I go; what happens?"

"It's curious; I don't. Once if I thought you met, looked at, spoke to, any other woman prettier or better dressed than I could be, I suffered torture. But now, I'm through with it. I'm sorry it should be so."

"But that's that," said Osborn roughly, with a brief laugh.

He pulled her to him strongly, kissing her.

"I love you, you know. But if you've no more use for me--"

"Well?"

"Don't expect too much of me, that's all."

"I have told you that I expect nothing."

"Then you ought to!" he broke out angrily.

"I thought men appreciated complaisant wives."

"Complaisant? It's callousness; don't-careness. You mean me to understand, then, that you've reckoned with everything?"

"No, I don't. I mean you to understand that I don't trouble to do any reckoning about you at all."

As she uttered the words she was conscious of the brutality of them; but she was speaking truth, representing those feelings which had taken the place of love-emotions in her heart; and what else was there to say?

"I must say," he said, "you're candid."

"I want to be. If we once thoroughly understood each other we'd shake down better and go our ways in peace. I don't want formal separation, for the children's sake."

"Formal separation? If we had that, because you refused to live with me, desertion would be constituted and _I'd_ get the children, you know."

"I wonder," she said, starting. "I should fight."

He saw the set meditation on her face under the moonlight.

"Would there be nothing I could say?" she asked, lifting her eyes to his. "I wonder if there'd be no countercharge ingenuity could bring?"

She did not mean what occurred to him; the things in her mind were of too untechnical a nature to find a hearing in the divorce courts; but as she asked her question suddenly his heart seemed to rock and to stand still for a space, while he shifted his eyes rapidly from hers and gazed straight out over the steering-wheel, down the hill, into the blue-white moonlit distance.

Roselle!

Who would believe his innocent tale if he stood up in that sad court which recorded the most human of all frailties, and said: "We travelled together here and we travelled together there; and I defrayed these expenses and those expenses; and I've kissed her; and yes, we've certainly been alone in very compromising circumstances, but I ask you to believe that technically my marital honour is intact, and that I've been true and faithful to my wife"?

The fun and the folly which had been so worth while, so like a draught of wine on the cold journey through middle-class pauperism, now appeared stripped of their carnival trappings. It was only folly which stared back at him now, and she had become ugly; sickening and wholly undesirable. Folly was utter trash. He replied to Marie in a voice so studied as to rivet her attention, asking:

"What do you mean?"

She looked at him, and knowledge came to her, born of a swift intuition raised by his obvious difficulties. In a flash she knew; but even while she knew, she didn't care; it was lamentable, how dead she was.

"Oh," she hesitated, a faint smile crossing her lips, "I mean nothing.

Please don't suppose I wish to make your private affairs mine."