“The garden isn’t open this morning,” he said.

The derangedman stopped and looked at him.The keeper went to the seat and picked up the tobacco pouch left lying there.

“Don’t leave your tobacco, sir,” he said, taking it to the gentleman in the linen coat.

“I was just asking this lady to stay to lunch,” the latter said politely.“She is a friend of mine.”

The woman turned and walked swiftly, blindly, between the sunny roses, out of the garden, past the house with the blank, dark windows, through the sea pebbled courtyard to the street.Hastening and blind, she went forward without hesitating, not knowing whither.Directly she came to the house she went upstairs, took off her hat, and sat down on the bed.It was as if some membrane had been torn in two in her, so that she was not an entity that could think and feel.She sat staring across at the window, where an ivy spray waved slowly up and down in the sea wind.There was some of the uncanny luminousness of the sunlit sea in the air.She sat perfectly still, without any being.She only felt she might be sick, and it might be blood that was loose in her torn entrails.She sat perfectly still and passive.

After a time she heard the hard tread of her husband on the floor below, and, without herself changing, she registered his movement.She heard his rather disconsolate footsteps go out again, then his voice speaking, answering, growing cheery, and his solid tread drawing near.

He entered, ruddy, rather pleased, an air of complacency about his alert figure.She moved stiffly.He faltered in his approach.

“What’s the matter?”he asked a tinge of impatience in his voice.“Aren’t you feeling well?”

This was torture to her.

“Quite,” she replied.

His brown eyes became puzzled and angry.

“What is the matter?”

he said.

“Nothing.”

He took a few strides, and stood obstinately, looking out of the window.

“Have you run up against anybody?”he asked.

“Nobody who knows me,” she said.

His hands began to twitch.It exasperated him, that she was no more sensible of him than if he did not exist.Turning on her at length, driven, he asked:

“Something has upset you hasn’t it?”

“No, why?”she said neutral.He did not exist for her, except as an irritant.

His anger rose, filling the veins in his throat.

“It seemslike it,” he said, making an effort not to show his anger, because there seemed no reason for it.He went away downstairs.She sat still on the bed, and with the residue of feeling left to her, she disliked him because he tormented her.The time went by.She could smell the dinner being served, the smoke of her husband’s pipe from the garden.But she could not move.She had no being.There was a tinkle of the bell.She heard him come indoors.And then he mounted the stairs again.At every step her heart grew tight in her.He opened the door.

“Dinner is on the table,” he said.

It was difficult for her to endure his presence, for he would interfere with her.She could not recover her life.She rose stiffly and went down.She could neither eat nor talk during the meal.She sat absent, torn, without any being of her own.He tried to go on as if nothing were the matter.But at last he became silent with fury.As soon as it was possible, she went upstairs again, and locked the bedroom door.She must be alone.He went with his pipe into the garden.All his suppressed anger against her who held herself superior to him filled and blackened his heart.Though he had not know it, yet he had never really won her, she had never loved him.She had taken him on sufference.This had foiled him.He was only a labouring electrician in the mine, she was superior to him.He had always given way to her.But all the while, the injury and ignominy had been working in his soul because she did not hold him seriously.And nowall his rage came up against her.

He turned and went indoors.The third time, she heard him mounting the stairs.Her heart stood still.He turned the catch and pushed the door it was locked.He tried it again, harder.Her heart was standing still.

“Have you fastened the door?”he asked quietly, because of the landlady.

“Yes. Wait a minute.”

She rose and turned the lock, afraid he would burst it.She felt hatred towards him, because he did not leave her free.He entered, his pipe between his teeth, and she returned to her old position on the bed.He closed thedoor and stood with his back to it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked determinedly.

She was sick with him.She could not look at him.

“Can’t you leave me alone?” she replied, averting her face from him.

He looked ather quickly, fully, wincing with ignominy.Then he seemed to consider for a moment.

“There’ssomething up with you, isn’t there?”he asked definitely.

“Yes,” she said, “but that’s no reason why you should torment me.”

“I don’ttorment you.What’s the matter?”

“Why should you know?”she cried, in hate and desperation.

Something snapped.He started and caught his pipe as it fell from his mouth.Then he pushed forward the bitten off mouth piece with his tongue, took it from off his lips, and looked at it.Then he put out his pipe, and brushed the ash from his waistcoat.After which he raised his head.

“I want to know,” he said.His face wasgreyish pale, and set uglily.

Neither looked at the other.She knew he was fired now.His heart was pounding heavily.She hated him, but she could not withstand him.Suddenly she lifted her head and turned on him.

“What right have you to know?” she asked.

He lookedat her.She felt a pang of surprise for his tortured eyes and his fixed face.But her heart hardened swiftly.She had never loved him.She did not love him now.

But suddenly she lifted her head again swiftly, like a thing that tries to get free.She wanted to be free of it.It was not him so much, but it, something she had put on herself, that bound her so horribly.And having put the bond on herself, it was hardest to take it off.But now she hated everything and felt destructive.He stood with his back to the door, fixed, as if he would oppose her eternally, till she was extinguished.She looked at him.Her eyes were cold and hostile.His workman’s hands spread on the panels of the door behind him.

“You know I used to live here?”she began, ina hard voice, as if wilfully to wound him.

He braced himself against her, and nodded.

“Well, I was companion to Miss Birch of Torril Hall she and the rector were friends, and Archie was the rector’s son.”There was a pause.He listened without knowing what was happening.He stared at his wife.She was squatted in her white dress on the bed, carefully folding and re folding the hem of her skirt.Her voice was full of hostility.

“He was an officer a sub lieutenant then he quarrelled with his colonel and came out of the army.At any rate” she plucked at her skirt hem, her husband stood motionless, watching her movements which filled his veins with madness “he was awfullyfond of me, and I was of him awfully.”

“How old was he?”asked the husband.

“When when I first knew him?Or when he went away? ”

“When you first knew him.”

“When I first knew him, he was twenty six now he’s thirty one nearly thirty two because I’m twenty nine, and he is nearly three years older ”

She lifted her head and looked at the opposite wall.

“And what then?” said her husband.

She hardened herself, and said callously:

“We were as good as engaged for nearly a year, though nobody knew at least they talked but it wasn’t open.Then he went away ”

“He chucked you?”said the husband brutally, wanting to hurt her into contact with himself.Her heart rose wildly with rage.Then “Yes”, she said, to anger him.He shiftedfrom one foot to the other, giving a “Ph!”of rage.

There was silence for a time.

“Then,” she resumed, her pain giving a mocking note to her words, “he suddenly went out to fight in Africa, and almost the very day I first met you, I heard from Miss Birch he’d got sunstroke and two months after, that he was dead ”

“That was before you took on with me?”

said the husband.

There was no answer.Neither spoke for a time.He had not understood.His eyes were contracted uglily.

“So you’ve been looking at your old courting places!”he said.“That was what you wanted to go out by yourself for this morning.”

Still she did not answer him anything.He went away from the door to the window.He stood with his hands behind him, his back to her.She looked at him.His hands seemed gross to her, the back of his head paltry.

At length, almost against his will, he turned round, asking:

“How long were you carrying on with him?”

“What do you mean?”she replied coldly.

“I mean how long were you carrying on with him?”

She lifted her head, averting her face from him.She refused to answer.Then she said:

“I don’tknow what you mean, by carrying on.I loved him from the first days I met him two months after I went to stay with Miss Birch.”

“And doyou reckon he loved you?”he jeered.

“I know he did.”

“How do you know, if he’d have no more to do with you?”

There was a long silence of hate and suffering.

“And how far did it go between you?”he askedat length, in a frightened, stiff voice.

“I hate your not straightforward questions,” she cried, beside herself with his baiting.“We loved each other, and we WERE lovers we were.I don’t care what YOU think:what have you got to do with it?We were lovers before ever I knew you ”

“Lovers lovers,” he said, white with fury.“You mean you had your fling with an army man, and then came to me to marry you when you’d done ”

She sat swallowing her bitterness.There was along pause.

“Do you mean to say you used to go the whole hogger?”he asked, still incredulous.

“Why, what else do you think I mean?”she cried brutally.

He shrank, and became white, impersonal.There was a long, paralysed silence.He seemed to have gone small.

“You never thought to tell me all this before I married you,” he said, with bitter irony, at last.

“You never asked me,” she replied.“I never thought there was any need.”

“Well, then, you SHOULD think.”

He stood with expressionless, almost childlike set face, revolving many thoughts, whilst his heart was mad with anguish.

Suddenly she added:“And I saw him today,” she said. “He is not dead, he’s mad.”

Her husband looked at her, startled.

“Mad!’he said involuntarily.

“A lunatic,” she said.It almost cost her her reason to utter the word.There was a pause.

“Did he know you?”asked the husband in a small voice.

“No,” she said.

He stood and looked at her.At last he had learned the width of the breach between them.She still squatted on the bed.He could not go near her.It would be violation to each of them to be brought into contact with the other.The thing must work itself out.They were both shocked so much, they were impersonal, and no longer hated each other.After some minutes he left her and went out.