She listened with interest and comprehension.  And Osborn looked at George’s rapt face and her loving one, and drew a sharp comparison between what mattered and trash.

At last George went, and the husband and wife were alone again.

He started to the door on a sudden impulse.

“I’ll unpack and get those things,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yes, do,” she nodded, “before George goes to sleep.  Your things are in the dressing-room, and he will be there.”

“We’ve simply got to have another flat,” he replied, with a pleasant sensation of the power to pay for it.

For a few minutes Marie Kerr sat quiet, staring at the fire.  The home-coming, so stimulating to Osborn, had for her been inexpressibly stale.  She was not thrilled; she was left cold as the November night outside.  The new and pretty habits of her life were in peril of being broken, and her reluctance that it should be so was keen.  She got up and mended the fire and patted the cushions absently.  She could hear Osborn talking to his son, and Ann busy in the kitchen.

A man in the house was once more going to set the clock of life.

Before Osborn had found what he sought she went to her bedroom.  The baby and Minna were sleeping side by side in their cots, a screen drawn round them to shade them from the light.  Deep in the perfect slumber of childhood, they did not awake at her careful entry.  She switched up the electric light over her dressing-table, and began to change her blouse and skirt for the black frock in which she dined.  While she was standing thus, half dressed, Osborn came in.

She swung round upon him, hands raised in the act of smoothing her hair, and there was something in her face which made him halt.  He looked at her uncertainly.

She could not have helped saying if she would: 

“You startled me.  I didn’t hear you knock.”

He had not knocked.  The puzzle in his head increased.  Why should he knock?  His mouth opened and shut again.  He came forward hesitatingly.

“I—­I—­what do you mean, darling?” he began.  “I wanted to bring you these.”

His coming thus was to her symbolic of legal intrusion upon all her future privacy.  In that year, privacy had been one of the things she enjoyed most, after the edge was off the first loneliness.  She found it hard to relinquish her right to it.  She stepped into the frock quickly, and drew it upwards before he reached her.  His hands were full of little things, which he cast in a hurry upon the dressing-table.  She knew that he wanted to touch, to fondle her.  She slipped her arms swiftly into the sleeves and fastened the first hook across her breast; in her eyes a shrinking antagonism unveiled itself.

She uttered hurriedly:  “We have to be very quiet; the children are asleep.”

He cast a cursory glance towards the screened corner.

“They’re all right; they can’t see or hear or anything else.  Come here and let me put this hair-band thing on.”