"It will be a good holiday for you."

"Great!" he answered, his satisfaction bursting forth, "great!"

"I wish I could come with you."

"Ah," he said, "ah!..." She watched him with a knifelike keenness while he reflected, and she read the stealthy gratification of the thought he voiced next: "But you can't, old girl There are the kiddies."

"Do you suppose I don't know that?"

"Oh, well; I knew you were only joking."

Joking?

What a joke!

"I shall try to save a bit of money for the first time in my life," he said. "I'll leave you a clear two hundred for yourself and the kids--that's all right, isn't it? Two hundred, and you won't have my enormous appetite to cater for! You'll do very well, won't you, Mrs.

Osborn?"

"Thank you. We shall do quite well."

"I'll arrange at the bank, and give you a chequebook."

She said next:

"A whole year! Baby'll forget you."

The remark seemed to him peculiarly womanish and silly. What on earth did it matter, anyway? But he had patience with her, knowing how sorely better men than he were tried by their wives.

"Well," he observed, "kids' memories are very short, aren't they?"

Marie went on sorting the clothes; presently she drew a chair to the table, and began to work with needle and thread, darning, tightening buttons, performing the many jobs which only a wife would find. As she sewed she glanced again and again at her husband; he had sunk deep into his chair in an abandonment of rest, his legs stretched before him, his pipe between his teeth, his shining eyes fixed upon the fire.

Now and again his lips twitched to a smile over the pipe stem. He was thinking, imagining, revelling in the freedom of the approaching year.

The marriage task had infinitely wearied him. For a year, with a well-lined pocket, and a first-class ticket, he was to travel away from it all. He was deeply allured, and his delight was again young and robust; he looked forward most eagerly, as a school-boy to a promising holiday.

After she had sewed awhile with a methodical tightening of all the buttons, and an unconscious tightening of her lips too, she said:

"Well, you'll come back and find us all the same."

He roused himself slightly.

"I hope so. Take care of yourselves."

She could have screamed at him.

"We shall jog along here," she said.

He looked at her abstractedly. "Take the kids to Littlehampton in the summer; give yourselves a change. Your mother'll go with you, I daresay."

"How jolly!"

He took her seriously. He seemed so densely absorbed in what was coming to him that he only just heard her reply.

He said absently: "I hope it will be; look after yourselves."

She went back, in her busy mind, to the honeymoon adventure on which they had both embarked six and a quarter years ago. Then they had gone out hand-in-hand like children into a big dark and they had found light. Now they had dropped hands; and at the first chance he ran off alone, a boy once more, hungry for thrills. A strong yearning rose in her to run after him, catch his hand again, and set out with him. But there was much in the way; the butcher and baker, speaking through her mouth, had dulled his ears to her voice; he had forgotten how to hold hands; they were out of tune. Nature had sent them, all those years ago, converging together; and married life had sent them apart again.

Married life!

She traced the pattern of it, which she saw in her mind, upon the table with her needle tip--

[Illustration: Osborn / Osborn / / [Symbol: Moon] Honeymoon / / Marie / Marie]

It was like that.

She saw wet drops falling upon the table; they were her tears. Her husband happened to look up at the moment, and, seeing them too, looked hastily away again. He did not want to see them; there were too many tears in marriage.

But soon he would be away from marriage for a whole year.

He did not want her to cry; it was terribly irritating, and she had cried too much--not lately, but in the first years. Lately she had disciplined herself better, become more cheerful, realised, no doubt, that she was quite as well off as other men's wives, and really had nothing to weep for. But, in case those tears which had fallen should be precursors of one of the old storms, he knocked out his pipe, rose, and said:

"Well, I'll be off to bed. I shall have a lot to do to-morrow."

She answered: "Very well, dear. I shan't be long."

The door shut upon him and she was alone. She listened for the closing of the bedroom door upon him, knowing that then he would not come back, knowing that he had seen and feared her tears. Then she dropped her work, and ran over to the hearthplace, and, kneeling down by his chair still warm from the impress of his body, laid her head upon it, and cried terribly.

When she had married him she gave up her life and took his instead. If he removed it, how should she live? She had become so much a part of him that her suffering was devastating; it was physical. And now, giving rein to herself, her sex side tugged at her pitilessly.

Jealousy tore through her like a hot wind. She had a dozen grey hairs, a thin throat, a tired face, rough hands, two spoiled teeth in the front upper row. That was not the worst; the gaiety of her wit had been sapped. She could not have kept two men amused at a dinner table as that raven woman in the Royal Red did had her life depended upon it. Six years ago she could. She could have had them in her white, pretty hands; but not now. Not now! Never any more!

Never had she wept as she wept now before Osborn's chair in the silent dining-room, and when it seemed as if all founts of tears had run dry, so that she was left merely sobbing without weeping, she collected herself to pray.

She prayed:

"O God, teach men! Teach Osborn. Let them know. Let them think and have pity. Make him admire me, God. Make him admire me for the children I've suffered over, even if my face is spoiled. But, God, don't let me be spoiled. Can't I recover? O God, why do You spoil women? It's not fair. Help me! Keep him from the other women--the women who are fresher and prettier than me. Help me to fight. Let me win. Keep him loving me. Keep him thinking of me every day. For Christ's sake."

And after that she prayed on in some formless way till the clock struck half-past eleven, and a rapping came upon the other side of the wall, and with it sounded Osborn's muffled voice.

He somehow guessed that she would cry a little; get things over quietly by herself. It was the best way. But it was now half-past eleven....

She rose, rapped back, and tidied her hair quickly before the round mirror over the mantelpiece. Her face was ravaged. But in the bedroom she would have to undress by a very subdued light lest she awakened the baby, so he would not see, even if he wished to see. She knew, however, that he did not wish it. After making neat piles of the scattered garments again, she raked out the fire, switched off the lights, and went quietly into the bedroom.

His voice was a little testy to conceal his apprehensions.

"I must say you haven't hurried! You haven't been _making_ me half a dozen new shirts, have you, old girl?"

She replied in a carefully-steadied tone: "There was a good deal to do, and I wanted to finish it."

He pulled his bedclothes up higher around him. "Well, thanks awfully.