“I don’t ask, Osborn,” she replied very gently.

Silence settled down upon them.  They remained at the top of the great hill, each staring down it into the long space of unearthly clearness and light.  Automatically he withdrew his arm from her shoulders where it had been resting heavily and dropped his hand on the steering-wheel.  After awhile he said: 

“By the way, I’m going out with this car to-morrow.”

“So you told me,” she answered.

“Had I mentioned it before?” he said thickly.  “Well ...  I shall be out all day.”

“Thank you for telling me.  It’s considerate of you.  We make a little difference in the catering if you’re out.”

He clenched his hand round the wheel.

“I’m running down to Brighton; but I shall get back to town for dinner; late motoring’s pretty cold in November.  I shall be dining at Pagani’s—­where we used to go so much, you remember.”

“I remember.  I hope you’ll have a fine day.”

He gave a savage twitch to the hand-brake, let in his clutch, and in a moment or two the car ran forward.

“It beats me,” he whispered to himself.  “It—­just—­beats—­me.”

His whisper was lost in the rush of the car down the hill.  His wife had leaned back snugly under the fur rug and her profile in the moonlight was serene, neither happy nor unhappy, but absolutely complacent.  He seemed to get a glimpse of their future, with her figure travelling away into a far distance, divergent from his.

[Illustration: 
Osborn \ / Osborn
          \ /
           \/ [Symbol:  Crescent moon] Honeymoon
           /\
          / \
 Marie / \ Marie]

That was marriage.

Two strangers met each other; fused, became of one flesh and one spirit, kindled a big hearth fire called home; travelled away from each other; and two strangers died.  Marriage!

The next day, Sunday, he took the Runaway out of her garage early, and drove, earlier than the hour Roselle had mentioned, to the flat which she shared with another woman swimming down the same stream as herself and catching at the same straws.

She was not dressed; when a charwoman let him in upon the Sunday morning debris of the place, Roselle’s voice rang shrill and ill-tempered down the corridor.

“Osborn, that you already?  I’m not dressed; I’ve not breakfasted; I’m not even awake.  Just put your head in here and see.”

Following the direction of the voice, he opened a door a few inches, and put his head round.  An array of women’s litter confronted him strewn on every available chair, on dressing-table and floor.  The windows must have been closed, or nearly so; the blinds were down; there was a faint reek of perfume and spirits and stale cigarette smoke in the room; and in two narrow tumbled beds were two women, one whose head was still drowsy on her pillow, and Roselle, who sat up in a pale blue nightgown with a black ribbon girdled high about the waist, and her raven hair in a mop over her eyes.