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‘Oh!’

Then she got ready for her husband’s return.

‘Well?’ she said, when he came in; and she looked daggers…. ‘Well?’

‘I’m afraid I’m later than usual, my dear.’ It was, in fact, past nine o’clock.

‘Don’t talk to me!’ she replied, with a vigorous jerk of her head. ‘I know what you’ve been up to.’

‘What do you mean, my love?’ he gently asked.

She positively snorted with indignation; she had rolled her handkerchief into a ball, and nervously dabbed the palms of her hands with it. ‘I followed you this afternoon, and I saw you go into that ‘ouse with that low woman. What now? Eh?’ She spoke with the greatest possible emphasis.

‘Woman!’ said Mr Clinton, with a smile, ‘What are you to me?’

‘Don’t call me woman!’ said Mrs Clinton, very angrily. ‘What am I to you? I’m your wife, and I’ve got the marriage certificate in my pocket at this moment.’ She slapped her pocket loudly. ‘I’m your wife, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Wife! You are no more to me than any other woman!’

‘And you ‘ave the audacity to tell me that to my face! Oh, you–you villain! I won’t stand it, I tell you; I won’t stand it. I know I can’t get a divorce–the laws of England are scandalous–but I’ll ‘ave a judicious separation…. I might have known it, you’re all alike, every one of you; that’s ‘ow you men treat women. You take advantage of their youth and beauty, and then…. Oh, you villain! Here ‘ave I worked myself to the bone for you and brought up your children, and I don’t know what I ‘aven’t done, and now you go and take on with some woman, and leave me. Oh!’ She burst into tears. Mr Clinton still smiled, and there was a curious look in his eyes.

‘Woman! woman!’ he said, ‘you know not what you say!’ He went up to his wife and laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Dry your tears,’ he said, ‘and I will tell you of these things.’

Mrs Clinton shook herself angrily, keeping her face buried in her pocket handkerchief, but he turned away without paying more attention to her; then, standing in front of the glass, he looked at himself earnestly and began to speak.

‘It was during my illness that my eyes were opened. Lying in bed through those long hours I thought of the poor souls whose tale I ‘ad ‘eard in the coroner’s court. And all night I saw their dead faces. I thought of the misery of mankind and of the ‘ardness of men’s ‘earts…. Then a ray of light came to me, and I called for a Bible, and I read, and read; and the light grew into a great glow, and I saw that man was not meant to live for ‘imself alone; that there was something else in life, that it was man’s duty to ‘elp his fellers; and I resolved, when I was well, to do all that in me lay to ‘elp the poor and the wretched, and faithfully to carry out those precepts which the Book ‘ad taught me.’

‘Oh, dear! oh, dear!’ sobbed Mrs Clinton, who had looked up and listened with astonishment to her husband’s speech. ‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! what is he talking about?’

Mr Clinton turned towards her and again put his hand on her shoulder.

‘And that is ‘ow I spend my time, Amy. I go into the most miserable ‘ouses, into the dirtiest ‘oles, the foulest alleys, and I seek to make men ‘appier. I do what I can to ‘elp them in their distress, and to show them that brilliant light which I see so gloriously lighting the way before me. And now good-night!’ He stretched out his arm, and for a moment let his hand rest above her head; then, turning on his heel, he left the room.

Next day Mrs Clinton called on the doctor, and told him of her husband’s strange behaviour. The doctor slowly and meditatively nodded, then he raised his eyebrows, and with his finger significantly tapped his head….