Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/252

 ing Alice and Edward had better not be printed.

And how did the scene end? As all such scenes do, time after time, until at length, perhaps after many years, the patience of the male, and his love, come to the end of the same road and the scene ends differently—fatally, sometimes.

This time it ended in tears, from Anne, and plaintive little wolf-yelps of self-pity and contrition; and on Edward's side it ended in a fury of pity and a hugeness of forgiveness that were almost godlike—and then the usual mutual happy storm of passion.

After two days of peace Anne's brow suddenly puckered a little and she said in a flat Voice, "You needn't think that I'm not going to amuse myself while you are in Corsica."

"Oh, Anne—I thought that that was all settled."

"I'm not so easy to get rid of as you think."

"Oh, Anne!"

"Then take me with you."

Silence.

"You're ashamed of me."

"Oh, Anne, won't you please stop?"

She wouldn't. And there was another row. During this row Edward wished that he had never been born, that having been born innocent he had