I Forbid the Banns! — page 313: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON BEING A PERSONAGE. 303 wonder if all the young wives in London pour into his will- ing ear a full and true account of the rules that guide their lives? I wonder does he give them all the same advice— namely, to look carefully after their husbands.”’ ““T don’t know whether you are talking in jest or in - earnest,” she said quietly. ‘‘ But I know that only once before did I hear you talk in the same tone. I do not like the tone; it is not the tone of a true husband to atrue wife.” ‘Perhaps it is not,’ said he. ‘‘ But now and again, you know, people find themselves under such conditions as force them to ask, * What is truth ?’” He left the room quickly. ‘The fact was that he feared she might do so first, as she had done some weeks before, when the little cloud had floated across their life. When Bertha found herself alone she was conscious only of having received a blow fronfan unseen hand, as it were. She had a pained sensation, but at first she felt only benumbed. Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not its cause. So Shelley described such a sensation as that which Bertha experienced. What had she done—what had she said, to give rise to such an expression of bitter feeling on the part of Julian ? She could not remember having said or done anything. His words were mysterious. What spirit had taken possession of him to cause him to talk to her in this way? She recollected what he had said to her on that day at the Court, when they had returned from Ashmead. The words which he had just spoken to her were not the same, but the tone in which they were uttered was exactly the same. What did he mean by employing such a tone to her ? She had heard of men—especially husbands—being CORMIELIOOKS (E)