Looking at her, Anne’s tears grew heavy and fell.

“It’s your birthday,” said Edith softly.

And as she heard Majendie’s foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the birthday pocket handkerchief.

“Here she is,” said Edith as he entered.  “What are you going to do with her?  She doesn’t have a birthday every day.”

“I’m going,” he said, “to take her down to breakfast.”

Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become profoundly formal.  This morning Anne’s courtesy was coloured by some emotion that defied analysis.  She wore her new mood like a soft veil that heightened her attraction in obscuring it.

He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually quiet.  His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood.

When the meal was over she rose and went to the window.  The sedate Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool clear north.

“What are you thinking of?” said he.

“I’m thinking what a beautiful day it is.”

“Yes, isn’t it a jolly day?”

“If it’s beautiful here, what must it be in the country?”

“The country?” A thought struck him.  “I say, would you like to go there?”

“Do you mean to-day?”

Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of its twin.  In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight.

“Now, this minute.  There’s a train to Westleydale at nine fifty.”

“It would be very nice.  But—­how about business?”

“Business be—­”

“No, no, not that word.”

“But it is, you know; it can’t help itself.  There’s a devil in all the offices in Scale at this time of the year.”

“Would you like it?”

“I?  Rather.  I’m on!”

“But—­Edith—­oh no, we can’t.”

She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him where he stood smiling at her.  His face grew grave for her.

“Look here,” he said, “you mustn’t be morbid about Edith.  It isn’t necessary.  All the time we’re gone, she’ll be there, in perfect bliss with simply thinking of the good time we’re having.”

“But her back’s bad to-day.”

“Then she’ll be glad that we’re not there to feel it.  Her back will add to her happiness, if anything.”

She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her.

“Oh, Walter, how can you?”

He replied with emphasis.  “How can I?  I can, not because I’m a brute, as you seem to suppose, but because she’s a saint and an angel.  I take off my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her.  Go and put your hat on.”

She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways.  It was as if he had said:  “You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur in saintship that I am.”