She said to him one day, when he had
been telling her that as likely as not she might have to take in
washing or set up a sewing-machine:
'I am not afraid. You can always get money. There's nothing you
can't do.'
He laughed.
'That may be true. But how if I disappear some day and leave you to
take care of yourself?'
He had often threatened this in his genial way, and it never failed
to blanch her cheeks.
'If you do that,' she said, 'I shall kill myself.'
At which he laughed yet more loudly.
In her house at Wimbledon she perished of _ennui_, for she was as
lonely as Adela in Holloway. Much lonelier; she had no resources in
herself. Rodman was away all day in London, and very often he did
not return at night; when the latter was the case, Alice cried
miserably in her bed for hours, so that the next morning her face
was like that of a wax doll that has suffered ill-usage. She had an
endless supply of novels, and day after day bent over them till her
head ached. Poor Princess! She had had her own romance, in its way
brilliant and strange enough, but only the rags of it were left. She
clung to them, she hoped against hope that they would yet recover
their gloss and shimmer. If only he would not so neglect her! All
else affected her but little now that she really knew what it meant
to see her husband utterly careless, not to be held by any pettings
or entreaties.
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