Marie went on sorting the clothes; presently she drew a chair to the table, and began to work with needle and thread, darning, tightening buttons, performing the many jobs which only a wife would find.  As she sewed she glanced again and again at her husband; he had sunk deep into his chair in an abandonment of rest, his legs stretched before him, his pipe between his teeth, his shining eyes fixed upon the fire.  Now and again his lips twitched to a smile over the pipe stem.  He was thinking, imagining, revelling in the freedom of the approaching year.  The marriage task had infinitely wearied him.  For a year, with a well-lined pocket, and a first-class ticket, he was to travel away from it all.  He was deeply allured, and his delight was again young and robust; he looked forward most eagerly, as a school-boy to a promising holiday.

After she had sewed awhile with a methodical tightening of all the buttons, and an unconscious tightening of her lips too, she said: 

“Well, you’ll come back and find us all the same.”

He roused himself slightly.

“I hope so.  Take care of yourselves.”

She could have screamed at him.

“We shall jog along here,” she said.

He looked at her abstractedly.  “Take the kids to Littlehampton in the summer; give yourselves a change.  Your mother’ll go with you, I daresay.”

“How jolly!”

He took her seriously.  He seemed so densely absorbed in what was coming to him that he only just heard her reply.

He said absently:  “I hope it will be; look after yourselves.”

She went back, in her busy mind, to the honeymoon adventure on which they had both embarked six and a quarter years ago.  Then they had gone out hand-in-hand like children into a big dark and they had found light.  Now they had dropped hands; and at the first chance he ran off alone, a boy once more, hungry for thrills.  A strong yearning rose in her to run after him, catch his hand again, and set out with him.  But there was much in the way; the butcher and baker, speaking through her mouth, had dulled his ears to her voice; he had forgotten how to hold hands; they were out of tune.  Nature had sent them, all those years ago, converging together; and married life had sent them apart again.

Married life!

She traced the pattern of it, which she saw in her mind, upon the table with her needle tip—­

[Illustration: 
Osborn \ / Osborn
          \ /
           \/ [Symbol:  Moon] Honeymoon
           /\
          / \
 Marie / \ Marie]

It was like that.

She saw wet drops falling upon the table; they were her tears.  Her husband happened to look up at the moment, and, seeing them too, looked hastily away again.  He did not want to see them; there were too many tears in marriage.

But soon he would be away from marriage for a whole year.