Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "Oh, I think she'll be fifteen to-morrow. No; sixteen, I believe." "Oh, I didn't know." Lawrance finished his soup. "I'll open the champagne, Mary," he said to the servant. There was nothing new about this, that was the worst of it; there would be nothing new in what was coming. That suspiciously unimportant tone, how well-known it was! And there were never any climaxes, any catastrophic finales. Violence—of some sort, of any sort,— would have been better. . . . Jealousy of Olga Flynn, though, that was new to Lawrance; not new, he now suspected, to his wife, for she had been so exactly like this before. No doubt that jealousy accounted for other little scenes, ostensibly backed by other motives. They had chicken, which was rather tough—not well cooked. Muriel drank very little of the wine: the infringement, for his pleasure, of her claims, had to be noted. Her abstinence served as an opportune assertion of Puritanism, an assertion against him, for rebuke. "Don't you like that champagne, darling?" It was again the familiar conjugal use of this endearing term, to balance a betrayed annoyance of tone. "Oh, yes; I was afraid you didn't like your chicken." The presence of the maid constrained them, so they talked incessantly and pointlessly on usual topics. The young husband drank a good deal, but the wine had no effect on him. He was too angry and too much disturbed for that. Over dessert they were silent at first. He knew that if he talked she would gain her advantage by brief answers, and she thought that he would play the samegame. At last he was so nervous that he had to speak. "Come!" he cried, "I must fill your glass. There." Then he emptied the bottle into his own glass. "Let's drink to the day!" "'The day!'" She gave a little shudder. "Oh, I don't...