Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/81

 I must insist upon!" he added, sharply. "That you stay in your own house where you belong."

"Nevertheless I shall go."

There was a tone of quiet self-assertion in her voice that Anson had never heard before, and he suddenly felt himself in a white heat of anger.

"I forbid you to leave the house!" he cried. His masterful tone was also new to her, and for a moment husband and wife looked at each other, estranged and bewildered, as though all their old moorings had been swept away.

Then Emmeline left him and went slowly up stairs, with despair in her heart. If he could speak to her like that everything was at an end. Oh! Where should she turn, what should she do?

The nursery-door stood open at the head of the stairs, and instinctively she stayed her foot. The children! Neither of them had thought of the children. She went in and closed the door behind her and then she knelt down by the bed and burst into tears.

Tears have been a good deal maligned, but they are a great comfort. While Emmeline wept by the side of her sleeping boys she got her balance. It was impossible that she should do full justice to Anson's cause of complaint, that she should quite appreciate the enormity of her own transgressions. Indeed, her mind did not busy itself with either the one or the other. She simply struggled to adjust herself to the situation as it existed. After all everything was not over.