It was a bright October afternoon, Frank had gone to the station, and Lizzie, to appease the baby, had unbuttoned her dress.  The little servant-girl who assisted with the house-work was busy in the kitchen; for the fatted calf had been killed—­that is to say, a pair of soles, a steak, and a partridge were in course of preparation.  Lizzie thought of the partridge.  She had omitted soup from the dinner so that she might herself see to the fish; the steak, unless something quite unforeseen occurred, Annie would be able to manage, but the partridge!  Lizzie determined she would find an excuse for leaving the room; Frank would not like it, but anything would be better than that the bird should appear in a raw or cindery condition, which would certainly be the case if she did not see to it.  The jam-pudding was boiling and would be taken out of the pot at a fixed time.  And with baby upon her breast, she watched Sally scrape and clean the fish and beat the steak; then, hearing the front door open, she buttoned her dress, put baby in his cot, and went to meet her visitor.  Mike said he had never seen her looking so well; but in truth he thought she had grown fat and coarse; and in half an hour he had realized all the detail of their misfortune.  He guessed that she had helped to cook the dinner, that the wine had come from the public-house, that they had given up their room to him, and were sleeping in some small cupboard-like place at the end of the passage.

Of the many various unpleasantnesses of married life which had crowded into his consciousness since he had been in the cottage, this impressed him the most.  He went to sleep thinking of it, and when he sat down to write next morning (a little study had been arranged for him), it was the first thought that stirred in him.

“How fearfully unpleasant!—­and after having been married for nearly two years!  I could not do it.  If I were married—­even if I were to marry Lily, I should insist on having separate rooms.  Even with separate rooms marriage is intolerable.  How much better to see her sometimes, sigh for her from afar, and so preserve one’s ideal.  Married!  One day I should be sure to surprise her washing herself; and I know of no more degrading spectacle than that of a woman washing herself over a basin.  Degas painted it once.  I’d give anything to have that picture.”

But he could not identify Lily as forming part of that picture; his imagination did not help him, and he could only see her staid and gracious, outside all the gross materialism of life.  He felt that Lily would never lose her dignity and loveliness, which in her were one, and in his mind she ever stood like a fair statue out of reach of the mud and the contumely of the common street; and ashamed, an unsuccessful iconoclast, he could not do otherwise than kneel and adore.