no calls, but some of her women friends continued, nevertheless, to visit her.  Lastly, she took to sewing.  The little dark doctor, who had become an acquaintance, smiled at her and told her to do no more than she felt disposed to do.  She reclined on sofas in shaded rooms, and appeared to meditate.  She was not depressed, but thoughtful.  It was as though she had much to settle in her own mind.  At intervals the faint sound of the Hungarian Rhapsody mingled with her reveries.

As for Edward, his behaviour was immaculate.  During the day he made money furiously.  In the evening he sat with his wife.  They did not talk much, and he never questioned her.  She developed a certain curious whimsicality now and then; but for him she could do no wrong.

The past was not mentioned.  They both looked apprehensively towards the future, towards a crisis which they knew was inexorably approaching.  They were afraid, while pretending to have no fear.

And one afternoon, precipitately, surprisingly, the crisis came.

‘You are the father of a son—­a very noisy son,’ said the doctor, coming into the drawing-room where Edward had sat in torture for three hours.

‘And May?’

‘Oh, never fear:  she’s doing excellently.’

‘Can I go and see her?’ he asked, like a humble petitioner.

‘Well—­yes,’ said the doctor, ‘for one minute; not more.’

So he went into the bedroom as into a church, feeling a fool.  The nurse, miraculously white and starched, stood like a sentinel at the foot of the bed of mystery.

‘All serene, May?’ he questioned.  If he had attempted to say another word he would have cried.

The pale mother nodded with a fatigued smile, and by a scarcely perceptible gesture drew his attention to a bundle.  From the next flat came a faint, familiar sound, insolently joyous.

‘Yes,’ he thought, ’but if they had both been lying dead here that tune would have been the same.’

Two months later he left the office early, telling his secretary that he had a headache.  It was a mere fibbing excuse.  He suffered from sudden fits of anxiety about his wife and child.  When he reached the flat, he found no one at home but the cook.

‘Where’s your mistress?’ he demanded.

‘She’s out in the park with baby and nurse, sir.’

‘But it’s going to rain,’ he cried angrily.  ’It is raining.  They’ll get wet through.’

He rushed into the corridor, and met the procession—­May, the perambulator, and the nursemaid.

‘Only fancy, Ted!’ May exclaimed, ’the perambulator will go into the lift, after all.  Aren’t you glad?’

‘Yes,’ he said.  ‘But you’re wet, surely?’

‘Not a drop.  We just got in in time.’

‘Sure?’

‘Quite.’

The tableau of May, elegant as ever, but her eyes brighter and her body more leniently curved, of the hooded perambulator, and of the fluffy-white nursemaid behind—­it was too much for him.  Touching clumsily the apron of the perambulator, the stockbroker turned into his doorway.  Just then the girl from the next flat came out into the corridor, dressed for social rites of the afternoon.  The perambulator was her excuse for stopping.