"I am like you, Osborn, I have had a great year. If it hadn't meant losing mother it would have been a perfect year."

After a long pause, he dropped out, incredulously:

"Without me?"

She felt her hands grow suddenly cold with fear of the battle.

"Yes," she nodded, "without you."

As he looked at her she was again as dazzling to him as a beautiful stranger; and as strange.

He said somewhat stiffly: "That's not exactly what a man expects to hear when he comes back after a long time."

"I'm sorry."

"You've changed somehow. What's the matter?"

"I've grown young again. That's all, isn't it?"

"I don't know if that's all."

"Let's talk of something else," she said gaily; "tell me more about yourself. I've had no details yet, and I'm longing for them. You're keeping the job, are you? And just what good things does keeping it mean?"

"A fur coat for Marie," he said with a hint of reproachful pathos.

"How lovely! But what will it mean to you was what I'm asking?"

"The salary is five hundred, as you know." And guardedly, for he knew many men who deemed it well to be careful over telling their wives these things, he added: "With any luck the commission's more than the salary."

He left it vague, like that, for safety.

"I do congratulate you, Osborn."

"Our ship's really in, at last, you see, old girl."

"My poor income fades into the background behind yours!"

"Well, yours isn't so bad for a woman!"

"So I've found. I've had clothes, and gone about, and begun to think and read and see good plays again, all on the strength of it."

She opened a bank-book. "This is all the accounting for the two hundred you arranged to be paid in to me. You'll see I've used it legitimately--none of it's gone on frippery. And I've paid George's schooling myself this last six months, and Ann's wages, as I hadn't your permission for either. So you'll see there's even a balance left to your credit."

"Why make a song about my 'permission'? You've always been a free agent, haven't you?"

"Won't you just run your eye over this, now you're taking hold of the family bank account again?"

To satisfy her he took the book and skimmed over figures rapidly.

"You've been a good girl."

"So glad you think so."

Osborn smoked on quietly, but his thoughts were turbulent. She was giving him strange qualms, and he could not quite understand her direction. That something worked in her head he guessed, but, unwilling to hear of it, he asked no questions. It was very comfortable by the fire, and when he pitched the account-books away from her and took her hand again, she let it lie in his.

He pressed it.

"Well?" he whispered with a meaning look, wanting response.

It seemed as if she had none to give, kind and sweet as she was to him.

"I'm forgetting," he said in a few minutes, leaning forward to knock out his pipe, "that I've a job to do for you. I'll see to that bedstead now, shall I?"

"Why?" she said coldly. "It is all ready made up for you in the dressing-room. What do you want to do?"

He stared, bewildered.

"I'm not going to sleep there."

"Aren't you? Then I will."

He began to see dimly the meaning of her mood; but he was stumbling about in darkness to find her reasons for it. What reasons could she have for so extraordinary a reply?

"My dear good girl," he cried sharply, "explain yourself."

"I don't know how to, exactly. But I have liked having my room to myself. I wish to keep it."

"You've got some nonsense into your head--"

"It isn't nonsense. It's just fact. I've been without a husband for a year and I've found it wonderfully restful. I can be without him some more."

"Have you any idea of the rubbish you're talking?"

She looked at him curiously, unaffected by his authoritative tone, and, seeing her disaffection, he felt uncomfortably at a loss, since his authority had failed him. He was dumbfounded; angry and stricken at once; he had not the least idea now what tone to take.

He dropped suddenly to persuasion.

"Look here, my dear girl, tell me what you're thinking of. You know I'm only too anxious to respect your feelings and wishes; I don't think I've ever violated them to the least extent, have I? If I have, it was unknowingly. You women have such queer moods. What is it?

Perhaps you're unwell and nervy, though you look all right. Anyway, come here and tell me all about it."

To avoid his encircling arm she rose. She laid one arm along the mantelpiece, and put one foot on the fender as if to be warmed; the attitude struck him as exceedingly negligent, and when she began to speak it was in no sense as an argument, but as a statement of facts long ago cut-and-dried for storage in her mind.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I don't want you. I couldn't bear you in my room."

She had got it out, and he was saying nothing, only sitting forward, hands on knees, looking up at her, horror, anger and disbelief in his face.

She went on: "It'll be no good arguing. I've suffered and suffered, and had it all out with myself, and it's over. But I'll tell you everything, putting it plainly, because I'd like you to understand--if men ever do trouble to understand. Look at me!"