The Argosy — page 171: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

156 Divided. never given a thought to the mighty question of dress. He had i been riding about muddy lanes when he learnt accidentally of his wife’s extraordinary behaviour, and he had started, then and there, for Paris, booted and gaitered, and with his old riding-whip in his | hand. Naturally, he had no opportunity of travelling to Camper next | | day in any other costume. To tell the truth, he guessed that this | unfortunate accident would annoy the delicate susceptibilities of his wife, and it was with the desire to keep himself as much as possible from her view that he had chosen the corner seat on the same side of the compartment, so that unless she deliberately turned to look at him he need not offend her sight. Denise had parted from Madame Lenard full of excellent inten- tions. But now, as she thought over the happy life of pleasurable work and excitement that she was exchanging for the dreary solitude of Camper, her spirits sank; whilst every stolen glance at Raoul increased her irritation. What a great clumsy boor he looked in his rough old clothes, and how cross his eyes and mouth were! How was it conceivable for her to be happy, or to sympathise with anyone 7 so thoroughly provincial ? | | She did mean to be kinder; to conceal her own troubles; to be | sorry for him, as Madame Lenard had asked her to be. But, un- |] luckily, when he presently addressed her to ask if she were comfort- able, it was at a moment when she was struggling against the feminine weakness of tears, so that, in very self-defence, she had to answer i with cold brevity: ‘Si, si; I am very well;” as though she did | not wish to be spoken to. | How often we speak the wrong word at the wrong moment; at | any other time it might be the right one; but how are we to foretell | that with our short-sightedness, our blundering want of mental : perception ? “Are you still angry?” went on Raoul. ‘Can you not forgive and forget? Not that I regret what I have done,” he added quickly. ‘On the contrary, I should act in the same way to-morrow under | the same circumstances. But cannot that be buried? Why should | we not start afresh, Denise? Will you?” | ‘¢ Why—why did you come like ¢/at, then, to humble me before | everyone by making such a guy of yourself? I believe, in truth, | that you like making me ashamed of you!” cried Denise, provoked | by the implied censure in his words, and casting on his gaitered legs | a glance of such withering contempt that, had he not been so thoroughly in earnest, Raoul must have seen the comic side of the situation. Instead of that, he only felt an unnecessary false shame | as he compared the delicate beauty of his wife with his own powerful | frame, with a disheartening sense of the contrast between them. She, slim, graceful, refined; he, big, untidy, uncouth. No wonder she was ashamed of him, =) COMMNCEOOOKS CCL a