But he did not look up, as he strode purposefully away.  A few months ago he would have lagged a little, glancing up and waving frequently before he finally disappeared.  This morning as she watched the thought smote:  “When did he forget to wave to me?  When did we leave off—­all this?”

She remembered it was when she began to be so really busy, after the baby came.  Baby was crying sometimes as they finished breakfast; she must hurry to him; it was time for his bath; he must have his bath, mustn’t he?  She couldn’t help that.  But she rather thought that perhaps this was the beginning of the end of all those dear smiles and salutes right down the street back to the girl above.  Perhaps Osborn had looked up in vain many mornings, hoping to see her leaning out there, and at last had ceased to mind whether she were there or not.

A surprise came for Marie after lunch.  She was making herself ready to carry her baby and her basket to the open-air market a street away, where the thriftier housewives of the neighbourhood shopped, when a delivery carman left at her door the handsome baby-carriage which Julia’s note had sent Desmond Rokeby out post-haste to buy.  Such a perambulator Marie had never hoped for, nor dreamed of; it boasted every luxury of contrivance, from the umbrella basket, slung to the handles, to its C-springs and its big, smooth-rolling tyres.  In colour it was French-grey, extremely dainty; and it came with Desmond’s love to his godson and a tactfully expressed hope that his gift had not been forestalled.  So Marie put her baby in, and her basket, too; and after she had finished admiring her pink-and-white son among the lavender upholstery, she wheeled him out proudly to the open-air market, where the equipage drew forth delighted comments from the vendors who knew her well.  She did not come straight home, as she had to do when carrying the baby; but, her purchases finished, she turned towards the Heath, and wheeled about proudly there for a while, envying no one, not the smart nurses who propelled their smart perambulators, nor the few mothers who strolled beside them.  She felt that, with the finest baby in town in a French-grey and lavender chariot, she could meet and beat any turnout of the kind.

Marie sang during the rest of the afternoon when she reached home again.  She sang while she made a cup of tea; sang while she put her boy to bed, and set about her preparations for her husband’s return; he heard her singing when he fitted his latchkey unobtrusively in the lock, and stepped, still furtively, into the hall.  He breathed freely again and told himself that the storm had passed.

He sat down by the fire, before which his wife had set his slippers, but he did not unlace his boots.  He was hungry; he cast a short look over the dinner-table to judge, by its arrangement, something of what he might be given to eat.  Before he had made a guess, Marie ran in.

“Guess!” she cried, “guess what’s happened!”