meant to tell Alan. It had never entered her head for one moment that Clifford, who, so she knew in her heart of hearts, had borne with her patiently, would have taken the initiative and opened the subject to the boy in her absence. She was stung beyond bearing. "Happy!" she said excitedly. "Who could be happy with your father? So he has been speaking to you about me, has he? And what has he been daring to say against me?" "He never said anything against you," the boy answered, in a low voice. "He only told me you were not happy together." She arranged the cushions on the sofa angrily, and leaned amongst them angrily. "Happy!" she said. "I should like to know who could be happy with your father—a man of no heart, no emotions, selfish beyond words, and unkind beyond belief." "Oh, mother, that's not true," the boy said, with an indignant outburst. "Father is always good and kind. I never once heard him say an unkind word to you or me. It's all your fault. It's your temper. That's what it is." [14] [14] His championship of his father aroused all the anger and jealousy in her nature. She got up from the sofa and turned to him. "You are just like him," she cried passionately, "just like him. Make your lives together, and find your happiness in each other. I don't want either of you." She hastened from the room, swept down the stairs, swept through the hall, through the study and flung the door of the laboratory violently open. Clifford, who was a chemist, was distilling over a flame a substance which represented more than a month's work. Marianne's sudden entry made him jerk the bottom of the flask containing it against the ring of the retort-stand. The flask cracked, and in an instant the whole of the contents blazed off and disappeared. She did not notice, and would not have cared if she had noticed. "What have you been saying to the boy?" she asked, in her tempestuous manner. Clifford moved round, looked at her, and leaned against the bench. "I have told him that we are not happy, and that we must
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