marriage meant? Her hand fell from the door, and she leaned against it for support. It seemed as if revelation after revelation was coming to her beyond her strength to meet. She was a wife, and she must go back to her place, whatever her individual inclination might be. She moved slowly toward the bed and sat down upon it. She felt strangely weak, and she shivered from head to foot.

"Come, lie down, Murva," said her husband, in a mollified voice. "You will take cold." And he drew her down beside him, and covered her with the bedclothes.

CHAPTER XX.

THE following morning as Murva and her husband were seated at the breakfast-table, a servant entered with a telegram which had just arrived.

"Your father is failing rapidly. You had better

come at once.

"CRAWFORD."

She handed it to her husband after she had read it, saying, "We will go in the noon train, will we not, Harold?"

"You can go then, certainly," he replied, "but I must follow you later if necessary. I cannot leave my business so suddenly, but will arrange matters so as to come at once if anything happens. Now do not exert yourself too much, I do not believe you are quite well," --she was unusually pale and heavy-eyed this morning -"but let Ann pack whatever is necessary to be taken with you. You do not feel particularly unhappy over this news, do you, my dear? You knew it was liable to come at any time." 66 'No, Harold. If I am honest I must say that I feel no grief over the prospect of my father's death, for what has his life been during the last seven years but a worse than death? And I have never had the love for

him that is usually bestowed upon a father. How could I? It was never called up in me."

"How could you indeed!" rejoined her husband. "Men do not realise what they are doing when they make tyrants of themselves. I thank heaven that I was the means of taking you out of that bondage, my darling! You would have died before this if you had remained in it."

"I think I should have freed myself some time," replied Murva, very gently.

"Well, I must be off," said he, as they rose from the table. "Make your preparations with as little exertion as possible, and I will return in time to take you to the station."

He kissed her good-bye-he never left her without doing so and Murva placed herself at the window where she could watch him till he turned the corner, as was her invariable custom. Then she went to attend to her duties, feeling that her inclination to remain quiet must not be indulged. She experienced an unusual solicitude as to her household, that all its details might be faultless, and that in what belonged to her own personal supervision there might be nothing lacking.

Not till she found herself in the moving train, everything carefully attended to at home, and her husband had taken leave of her with the promise to follow her shortly, did she seem able to review the events of the last twenty-four hours which had been waiting her attention under all the immediate action incidental to her going away. Some of the repulsion which she had felt the preceding night, and which had then sprung into existence, as if the visible birth of something previously hidden, clung to her still.

There was a new element in her thought of her

husband, something which, as yet, she did not understand and could only feel. It was a fact to her consciousness, though her reason could not now supply the why and wherefore for it. But her natural probing tendency began to exercise itself to this end. She reviewed their conversation of the previous evening, and now she could see that since Kate's disclosure she had had, way down in the bottom of her heart, covered from sight, a fear that what her friend had declared as the inevitable consequence of a man's nature might be true, might be a fact that must be recognised, however much her own higher instincts might reject and turn from it. Her seven years' experience of married life had been all that could be desired, according to the common verdict. And yet, at their expiration there had broken from her a protest which her husband could not understand, and which, she now saw, most men would not understand, if he was a fair example of the rest.

Why was there this protest? Why had she been impelled, almost against her will, to give utterance to what had been slowly growing within her during these seven really happy years? For she was not unhappy! She had no reason to be so. All that a kind, loving and indulgent husband could be and do had been her portion. But, as she had said to him, she felt "swallowed up" and something in her, something which could not. be satisfied with the care and affection bestowed upon a loved and valuable prisoner, had risen up and asserted its claims. It had spoken from her even while she felt half frightened and more than half wicked because of it, had spoken because it could not remain silent, and it had clamoured ever since, even though for a time she had turned from it and refused to hear it clamoured

:

for its rights, demanded that recognition which would alone satisfy it and silence its voice.

It was the "I" of her which could not be content as the adjunct of the husband, which, because of what it was, could not be absorbed utterly in the wife who was only that adjunct; which protested and protested, till from the first faint whisperings its voice had grown loud and strong and filled her ears with its din. And what a senseless fighting of ghosts it was, reason told her, speaking for men and women in general, representing the view of the situation which would be theirs. Other's would say What is it that you want? How can you possibly desire more than you have, except perhaps it be children? You have an elegant home, a kind husband, all the money you want, an influential position in society if you choose to have it. What in the name of common sense do you seek further?"

66

And as this arraignment rose before her the old cry sprang to her lips, "I seek freedom from bondage!" "Bondage! You in bondage!" laughed a chorus of voices. Why you are as free as it is possible for a woman to be. What would you do if your husband was a Turk, and you were shut up in a harem cage? Then you might complain, but not now!"

A

Ah! but there is more than one way of keeping a prisoner. She had stood at a window of her house one day which overlooked the garden of a neighbor. boy had a bird fastened to a post in the ground, by means of a string tied around one of its legs. The bird was out of doors, in the air and sunlight; was fed and tended carefully, for the boy loved it dearly. It had a chance to fly, of course. It would be cruel to deprive the bird of the opportunity. But with all this