During the two months he missed her a little in the Runaway, where her presence had secured for him an extra mark of distinction; but he had rather the feeling of a man surfeited.  He put it to himself in modern slang:  “I was fed up,” he said.  “She only wanted me to get the tickets and look after her luggage, and turn up when I was wanted, and be a kind of unpaid courier, while she travelled about getting experiences and hunting for bigger fools than me.  I’m about fed up.”

Osborn was to stop in Paris for a week on his way back; it was a week to which he had looked forward throughout the year.  Paris and expenses practically unlimited!  How gay it sounded!  What visions it conjured up!  But the week was a failure as far as pleasure went, though business was brisk.  For Osborn over all the pleasures of Paris there was a frost.  It was restless and light and bright, and all this living in hotels and cafes wasn’t worth while.  He wanted at last, very badly, to be at home again.

He half thought of wiring to Marie to join him.  How surprised and delighted and excited she’d be!  But how would she arrange about the kids?  She couldn’t come, of course.

Besides, there was an inimitable pleasure in picturing oneself entering the flat and finding her there just the same as ever.

Home was essentially the place to look for one’s wife.

Osborn did not know Paris with any intimacy.  A week-end had been his limit hitherto.  So he went to the Bon Marche to look for a gift for Marie, not knowing where else to look, and he bought her any trifle that he could imagine—­Roselle’s teaching was useful here,—­little chiffon collars, and a glittering hair-band ornament that he thought looked very French, and handkerchiefs, and a pair of silk stockings, and garters with great big fluffy pompoms on them.  She had had to be rather a mouse during her married life, after the trousseau was worn out and since her children came, anyway.  How pleased she would be to have these pretty things!

The evening he arrived, after dinner, they would sit down by the fire and he would tell her all his business news—­how well he’d done; all about his hopes and prospects, and he would give her some of his firm’s letters to him to read.  He would be sure of her sympathy and appreciation.

He had made more than a thousand pounds in commissions that year, and it was waiting for him, in a lump.  He drew a long breath at the thought of it.

A thousand pounds!  And there would be more to follow, for poor Woodall had died, and he was holding down the job.

He crossed to Dover on a still, cold day; it was an excellent crossing for the time of year.  He stood on deck, smoking, watching the white cliffs approach, looking back over the last year and forward to those that lay before him.  The last year—­how mad and jolly it had been for the greater part!  It had been a great piece of folly and a great piece of fun, travelling about with a lovely woman like Roselle Dates; it was a situation which half the men he knew would have envied him.  Coming as it did after a humdrum period of domesticity, where a man could not afford either folly or fun, the danger signals had been flying all the time.