His voice was a little testy to conceal his apprehensions.

“I must say you haven’t hurried!  You haven’t been making me half a dozen new shirts, have you, old girl?”

She replied in a carefully-steadied tone:  “There was a good deal to do, and I wanted to finish it.”

He pulled his bedclothes up higher around him.  “Well, thanks awfully.  Afraid I rushed you.  You won’t be long now, will you?  I want to get to sleep, and I can’t with someone moving about.”

“I’ll be quick.  There’s baby’s bottle to do—­it’s long past time.  She hasn’t waked, I suppose?”

“No; hasn’t made a sound.”

Marie lighted the spirit stove, and put the baby’s food on while she undressed.  Osborn watched her apprehensively, not knowing that she knew of what he did.  But she wasn’t going to make a fuss.

He was very thankful for that.

Every time she turned towards him he closed his eyes quickly, fearing conversation which he need not have feared.  She could not have talked to him.  When the food was ready and the bottle given, she was glad to creep into her own bed, erect a similar barricade of sheet and blankets, and sink into a sort of coma of grief and depression.  In a few minutes Osborn slept.

When Marie opened her eyes on the twilight of early winter morning it seemed to her that she could scarcely have had time to close them, but her bedside clock showed her, to her surprise, that she had been sleeping all night.  The greatness of the shock had passed, and she had to concern herself imminently with all the bustle of Osborn’s departure.  As he was not going to business to-day, not going out at all, in fact, until he left gloriously, like a man of leisure, in a taxicab at ten o’clock, he did no more than unclose a sleepy eye when his wife sprang out of her bed and murmur: 

“I say, old girl, you will do my packing, won’t you?”

“Yes.  I’m extra early, on purpose.”

So in the grey dawn, Marie went about her business.  She packed suit-case and kit-bag and hat-box, and placed the labels ready for Osborn to write; she dressed George and bade him help the three-year-old to dress; she brushed the rooms and lighted the fires; made the morning bottle for the baby; saw that boiling hot shaving water was ready for Osborn; gave the children their breakfast; cooked an unusually lavish one for the traveller; and had accomplished all these things by the time he was dressed and ready at nine o’clock.

He glowed with health and cheer.  The creases in his brow were smoothed out; his smile was ready; his voice had its old boyish ring.

Because he was going away from them the metamorphosis occurred which rived the wife’s heart afresh.  He was so glad to go.

He sat down with a great appetite to breakfast, while she faced him behind the tea tray.  The baby, being unable to help herself as yet, was still imprisoned in her cot in the bedroom until such time as her mother could attend to her, and on the dining-room floor George and the three-year-old, ordered to keep extremely quiet and inoffensive, played with their bricks.  Now and again an erection of bricks toppled down accidentally with a shattering noise, when Osborn exclaimed:  “Shut up, you kids!” and their mother implored:  “Do try to keep quiet while Daddy’s here.”