“I wonder what they’re doing in England now.”

“Well, I guess they’re asleep.”

“When I think of England I always think of it at tea time,” began Nora, and then stopped short.

A wave of regret caught her throat.  In spite of herself, the tears filled her eyes.  She looked miserably at the cheap, ugly tea things on the makeshift table before her.  Her husband watched her gravely.  Presently she went on, more to herself than to him: 

“Miss Wickham had a beautiful old silver teapot, a George Second.  She was awfully proud of it.  And she was proud of her tea-set; it was old Worcester.  And she wouldn’t let anyone wash the tea things but——­” Again, her voice failed her.  “And two or three times a week an old Indian judge came in to tea.  And he used to talk to me about the East, the wonderful, beautiful East.  He made me long to see it all—­I who had never been anywhere.  I’ve always loved history and books of travel more than anything else.  There are a lot of them there in my box—­that’s what makes it so heavy—­all about the beautiful places I was going to see later on with the money Miss Wickham promised me——­” her glance took in the mean little room in all its unrelieved ugliness.  “Oh, why did you make me think of it all?”

She bowed her head on the table for a moment.  Taylor laid his hand gently on her arm.

“The past is dead and gone, my girl.  We’ve got the future; it’s ours.”

She gently disengaged herself from his detaining hand and went over to the little window, looking out with eyes that saw other pictures than the window had to show.

“One never knows when one’s well off, does one?  It’s madness to think of what’s gone forever.”

For several minutes there was silence, during which Nora recovered her self-control.  Having wiped away her tears, she turned hack to him, smiling bravely.  “I beg your pardon.  You’ll think me more foolish than I really am.  I’m not the crying sort, I assure you.  But I don’t know, it all——­”

“That’s all right, I know you’re not,” he said roughly.  “I wish we’d got a good drop of liquor here,” he went on with the evident intention of changing the current of her thoughts, “so as we could drink one another’s health.  But as we ain’t, you’d better give me a kiss instead.”

“I’m not at all fond of kissing,” said Nora coolly.

Frank grinned at her, his pipe stuck between his white teeth.

“It ain’t, generally speaking, an acquired taste.  I guess you must be peculiar.”

“It looks like it,” she said lightly.

“Come, my girl,” he said, getting slowly up from his stool, “you didn’t even kiss me after we was married.”

“Isn’t a hint enough for you?”—­her tone was perfectly friendly.  “Why do you insist on my saying everything in so many words?  Why make me dot my i’s and cross my t’s, so to speak?”

“It seems to me it wants a few words to make it plain when a woman refuses to give her husband a kiss.”