Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/317

 felt an actual, living, physical repulsion…. To be his wife, living under the same roof with him in the intimacy of marriage, seemed horrible, monstrous…. But she had given her word. Over and over she declared to herself that she could not, would not break it…. This repetition, the necessity for bolstering up her will was an unmistakable sign of weakening.

On that very afternoon Malcolm had come directly from his train to the house, eager to be with her, filled with hope that he would find a change, that she would be kinder, sweeter to him. He had brooded over the matter until he had worked himself into a state of passionate excitement, into a condition of mind which did not promise diplomacy or self-restraint. It was no humor in which to seek out Lydia Canfield.

He waited for her in the parlor, impatiently; his humor growing more difficult as Lydia delayed. With boyish lack of understanding—with that lack of understanding which has killed many a marriage in the first days of the honeymoon—he insisted to himself that as Lydia’s fiancé he had certain rights upon which it was his duty to insist—which it would be unmanly, weak, for him to forego. She was to be his wife, and it was her duty to conduct herself toward him in the manner which his reading of romance had informed him was correct…. He