Her will soon got the upper hand, and he sank into the patient servant of her pleasures, snatching feverishly at all she gave him in return with the instinct of a man who, having sold his soul, is determined at least to get the last farthing he can of the price.
They had two children in four years--David Suveret and Louise Stephanie.

Louise resented the advent of the second so intensely that poor Sandy become conscious, before the child appeared, of a fatal and appalling change in her relation to him.

She had been proud of her first-born--an unusually handsome and precocious child--and had taken pleasure in dressing it and parading it before the eyes of the other mothers in their terrace, all of whom she passionately despised.

But Louie nearly died of neglect, and the two years that followed her birth were black indeed for Sandy.

His wife, he knew, had begun to hate him; in business his energies failed him, and his employers cooled towards him as he grew visibly less pushing and inventive.