“Come, come, this is going too far,” he said, in a tone that was half playful, half serious.  “It was all very well in the automobile; but here, in your own rooms, you know. . . .”

He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meant that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charming for him.

I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, and crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before the fire.  He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, and then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders and kissed my neck.

A shiver ran through me.  I felt as if I had suffered a kind of indecency.  I got up and changed my place.  My husband watched me with the look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter.  It was the proud and insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much as contemplated resistance.

“Well, this is funny,” he said.  “But we’ll see presently!  We’ll see!”

A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked for dinner to be served immediately.  My heart was fluttering excitedly by this time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of other people gave me.

While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of the day.  He asked who was “the seedy old priest” who had given us “the sermon” at the wedding breakfast—­he had evidently forgotten that he had seen the Father before.

I told him the “seedy old priest” was Father Dan, and he was a saint if ever there was one.

“A saint, is he?” said my husband.  “Wish saint were not synonymous with simpleton, though.”

Then he gave me his own views of “the holy state of matrimony.”  By holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused more misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair by marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and a scoundrel.

I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of all this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife.  I am sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every word he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepen into horror.

My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with my handkerchief.  I was feeling more frightened and more ashamed than I had ever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat down to dinner I tried to compose myself.  Partly for the sake of appearance before the servants, and partly because I was taking myself to task for the repugnance I felt towards my husband, I found something to say, though my voice shook.

My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal.  Once or twice, when he insisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses with him.  Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and disgust, I sometimes allowed myself to laugh.