We all have our
cross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from my
husband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open."
Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice which
implied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyes
tightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered
nerves, swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by
way of happy release from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and,
before her amazed husband could open his lips, hammered in the attack
from a third quarter.
"Little you would have cared," cried she, "if a miracle had not saved
my life this afternoon!"
Mr. Chater stood aghast. "My dearest! Saved you! From what?"
His dearest bitterly inquired: "What does it matter to you? You take
no interest. If my battered corpse--" Swept to tremendous heights by
the combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her two
brandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. "If my
battered corpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this
very afternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?"
Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair,
affirmed that he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which
he happened to be standing at the moment.
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