But each was too angry to speak, and the presence of each was fuel to the other’s anger.

Osborn was wakened in the morning by Marie’s attentions to the baby.  Though he had gone to sleep turned as completely away from her as possible, in the night he had rolled over, and now he watched her quietly and sulkily in the grey dawn, with just one eye opened upon her above the rim of his bedclothes.  If she looked he meant to close his eyes again quickly, pretending sleep.

But there was something about the frailty of her figure as she sat up in bed, turning to the table with the spirit-lamp and saucepan upon it, a quality of wistful charm in her little undressed head, which went towards softening him.  She was quiet, too; she spoke no word, nor looked towards him.  He watched her patiently waiting for the boiling of the milk; he watched the care with which she mixed the food; and then she got out of bed, not minding the stark cold, and gave the bottle to the drowsy baby.  She bent over it for a minute, smoothing its downy head with her light fingers; then she propped the bottle comfortably for the baby, by some ingenious management of its bed-clothing, and looked at the clock by her bedside.  After she had looked at the clock she stood hesitating for awhile and he knew what she was deciding.

She wanted five minutes more of that warm bed after a night broken, as usual, by the baby’s demands; but it was time to get up and sweep and cook and light fires and lay Osborn’s breakfast-table.

After all, it was Osborn who broke the silence between them, sulkily.

“I should give yourself five more minutes; you’ll freeze out there.”

Marie turned round quickly and looked at his long, comfortable outline under his pink quilt.  She hesitated, then spoke in her natural voice, which he was secretly relieved to hear: 

“It’s half-past six; I’ll have to dress.”

“Poor old girl!” Osborn mumbled from his pillow.  After she had gone quietly out, and he listened to the sounds of running water in the bathroom, and after she had come back, and he watched her again, one eye cocked furtively over the blankets, while she moved about quickly, he thought and considered and argued with himself about her.  But, after all, she did as other women do, didn’t she?  She had a home and a husband and child, and she was bound to look after them, wasn’t she?  He gave her all he could, and sometimes it seemed to him—­though he didn’t mean to grouse—­that she might have managed better.  His mother, for instance, grown grey and quiet in the service of himself and his father, had worked wonders with the limited family money.

Had she been still alive, she might have given Marie a few wrinkles, perhaps....

There is little doubt that Mrs. Kerr the departed could have given her young daughter-in-law a few wrinkles had she met her—­wrinkles of the most unprofitable kind upon her fair face; but as it was, Mrs. Kerr senior lay quietly afar off from No. 30 Welham Mansions, impotent to reform, and Osborn lay thinking his thoughts in silence while Marie, having dressed to petticoat and camisole, wreathed up her long and lustrous hair.