down in his pyjamas and a dressing-gown and sat talking about his wife.  She hadn’t wanted to let him come down because it was so late.  ’Is that a woman who’ll help a man in his business, I ask you?’ he kept on saying.  Mustn’t it be queer to have womenfolk with whom one doesn’t feel identical?” They exchanged a boastful look of happiness, the intensity of which, however, seemed the last effort he found possible.  For his lids drooped, and he supported his head on his hand and took a deep drink, and said drowsily, “I’m glad to be here.”

She went and stood beside him and stroked his hair.  “I should have come to you at Aberfay,” she grieved.  “But I knew I couldn’t stand the winter, and I would only have been a nuisance to you if I had been ill all the time.  Did the woman feed you properly, dear?”

He said, without looking up, “I wouldn’t have let you come.  It was a God-forsaken hole.  I couldn’t have stood it if it hadn’t been for”—­he gave it out with an odd hesitancy, almost as if he were boyishly shy—­“Ellen.  And I had to stand it, so that I could pull this thing off.”

She asked, “What thing, my dear?” though she was not so very greatly interested.  By daylight her ambition for him was fanatic and without limit.  But in this stolen hour, when no one knew that they were together, she let herself feel something like levity about his doings.  It seemed enough, considering how glorious he was, that he should merely be.

He began to eat again and told the story tersely between mouthfuls.  “You know the reason that I stayed up in Edinburgh after I’d sent off Ellen was that I thought I had to show the directors what I’d been doing at Aberfay next Thursday.  They were to come on to me after they’d paid their visit to the Clyde works.  Well, they came yesterday instead.  Sir Vincent has to go to America sooner than he expected, so he wanted to get it over.  When they saw what I’d been trying for during the last six months they got excited.  As a matter of fact it is pretty good.  I wish I could tell you about it, but you know I can’t.  Also I had told McDermott that Dynevors, the Birmingham people, had heard my contract was up in March, and wanted to buy me.  So they got frightened, and offered me a new contract that they thought would keep me.”  He had finished his meal, and he pushed away his plate and stretched himself, looking up at her and smiling sleepily.

“Have you taken it?”

“Rather.  It couldn’t have been better.”

“What is it?”

“They’ve doubled my screw and given me an interest in the business.”

“How?”

He shook his head, yawning.  “A permanent agreement ...percentages ...I’m too woolly-headed to tell you now.”

“But what does it mean?  You don’t care about money or position as a rule.  You’ve always told me that your work was enough for you.  Why are you so pleased?” Though the moment before she had thought she cared nothing for the ways that his soul travelled, she was in an agony lest he had been changed by the love of woman and had become buyable.