JUNE 105 



days may come of grey hair and wrinkles she will 

 even then never bore him. She will keep his 

 affection to her dying hour, however flagrantly she 

 may deserve to lose it ; but one cherishes a secret 

 though perhaps unworthy joy in the assurance that 

 inordinately as he may adore her, he will never let 

 her know it. Is he not a German husband, closely 

 connected in his modes of action with that Dr. Grill 

 who rouses Elizabeth's ire ? When she puts forth 

 her fascinations the Man of Wrath will retire with 

 well-affected indifference to his series of smoky 

 dens in the south-east corner of the house. When 

 she holds forth on the superiority of the sex he will 

 smile blandly down on her, talking her at last into 

 passionate flight. He dominates her by sheer 

 strength as well as by the power of that calm, 

 irritating smile. 



Although Elizabeth has done her best to per- 

 suade us, I, for one, do not feel at all sure that 

 it was by her own desire that she went to live in 

 a German garden. It is much more likely that 

 it was the iron will of the Man of Wrath which 

 condemned her to it after many ineffectual struggles, 

 although she had sense enough when she found 

 herself in exile to pretend that she liked it. How 

 else should the commiseration of the neighbour- 

 ing Patronising Potentate a woman potentate, of 

 course have roused her to such anger, if some 

 secret sting had not lain in the words 



" Ah, these husbands ! They shut up their 

 wives because it suits them, and don't care what 

 their sufferings are." 



It was the painful unacknowledged truth of the 



