But it is events, not months or years, which age.  Willoughby, who was only twenty-six, remembered his youth as a sometime companion irrevocably lost to him; its vague, delightful hopes were now crystallized into definite ties, and its happy irresponsibilities displaced by a sense of care, inseparable perhaps from the most fortunate of marriages.

As he reached the street in which he lodged his pace involuntarily slackened.  While still some distance off, his eye sought out and distinguished the windows of the room in which Esther awaited him.  Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the yellow gaslight within.  The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall-door either.  In some apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp he passed, to find comfort in assuring himself it was only ten minutes after ten.  He let himself in with his latch-key, hung up his hat and overcoat by the sense of touch, and, groping his way upstairs, opened the door of the first floor sitting-room.

At the table in the centre of the room sat his wife, leaning upon her elbows, her two hands thrust up into her ruffled hair; spread out before her was a crumpled yesterday’s newspaper, and so interested was she to all appearance in its contents that she neither spoke nor looked up as Willoughby entered.  Around her were the still uncleared tokens of her last meal:  tea-slops, bread-crumbs, and an egg-shell crushed to fragments upon a plate, which was one of those trifles that set Willoughby’s teeth on edge—­whenever his wife ate an egg she persisted in turning the egg-cup upside down upon the tablecloth, and pounding the shell to pieces in her plate with her spoon.

The room was repulsive in its disorder.  The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame.  The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of ‘slack’, and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate.  A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off.  On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article of furniture stood crookedly out of its place.

Willoughby took in the whole intolerable picture, and yet spoke with kindliness.  ’Well, Esther!  I’m not so late, after all.  I hope you did not find the time dull by yourself?’ Then he explained the reason of his absence.  He had met a friend he had not seen for a couple of years, who had insisted on taking him home to dine.

His wife gave no sign of having heard him; she kept her eyes riveted on the paper before her.

‘You received my wire, of course,’ Willoughby went on, ’and did not wait?’

Now she crushed the newspaper up with a passionate movement, and threw it from her.  She raised her head, showing cheeks blazing with anger, and dark, sullen, unflinching eyes.