She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman and a wife.  It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her own mere human hurt.  Still, he had asked her to share his house and the sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such presences.  He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had married.  If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.

She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it.  To her the question was of supreme importance.  Whatever happiness was now left to them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.

If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew which she really wished for more:  that Majendie would at once surrender to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest.  That Majendie was peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had not invited him at once.

At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress upon the name) to dinner on Friday.

The day was Tuesday.

“And is he coming?” said Anne.

“He is,” said Majendie.

When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine with Mrs. Eliott.

“I thought you would,” said Majendie.

She had hoped that he would think she wouldn’t.

They dined at seven o’clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst came into it.  It was raining heavily.  But Anne looked upon the rain as her ally.  Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such weather.

He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts’ door.

“Not a nice evening for turning out,” said he as he opened his umbrella and held it over her.

“Not at all,” said she significantly.

At ten o’clock he came to fetch her in a cab.

Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home.  And Majendie’s manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her tragic adventure.  But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts’ doorstep, with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.

Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a pathetic spectacle.

“He sounds,” said Anne to herself, “as if he were sorry.”