The situation was rendered more extraordinary because the Liberal candidate made no appearance in the constituency.  Paul inquired anxiously.  No one had seen him.  After lunch he drove alone to his father’s house.  The parlour-maid showed him into the hideously furnished and daub-hung dining-room.  The Viennese horrors of plaster stags, gnomes and rabbits stared fatuously on the hearth.  No fire was in the grate.  Very soon Jane entered, tidy, almost matronly in buxom primness, her hair as faultless as if it had come out of a convoluted mould, her grave eyes full of light.  She gave him her capable hand.

“It’s like you to come, Paul.”

“It’s only decent.  My father hasn’t shown up.  What’s the matter with him?”

“It’s a bit of a nervous breakdown,” she said, looking at him steadily.  “Nothing serious.  But the doctor—­I sent for him—­says he had better rest—­and his committee people thought it wiser for him not to show himself.”

“Can I see him?”

“Certainly not.”  A look of alarm came into her face.  “You’re both too excited.  What would you say to him?”

“I’d tell him what I feel about the whole matter.”

“Yes.  You would fling your arms about, and he would talk about God, and a precious lot of good it would do to anybody.  No, thank you.  I’m in charge of Mr. Finn’s health.”

It was the old Jane, so familiar.  “I wish,” said he, with a smile—­ “I wish I had had your common sense to guide me all these years.”

“If you had, you would now be a clerk in the City earning thirty shillings a week.”

“And perhaps a happier man.”

“Bosh, my dear Paul!” she said, shaking her head slowly.  “Rot!  Rubbish!  I know you too well.  You adding up figures at thirty shillings a week, with a common sense wife for I suppose you mean that—­mending your socks and rocking the cradle in a second-floor back in Hickney Heath!  No, my dear”—­she paused for a second or two and her lips twitched oddly—­“common sense would have been the death of you.”

He laughed in spite of himself.  It was so true.

Common sense might have screwed him to a thirty shillings-a-week desk:  the fantastic had brought him to that very house, a candidate for Parliament, in a thousand-guinea motor car.  On the other hand—­ and his laughter faded from his eyes—­the fantastic in his life was dead.  Henceforward common sense would hold him in her cold and unstimulating clasp.  He said something of the sort to Jane.  Once more she ejaculated “Rot, rubbish and bosh!” and they quarrelled as they had done in their childhood.

“You talk as if I didn’t know you inside out, my dear Paul,” she said in her clear, unsmiling way.  “Listen.  All men are donkeys, aren’t they?”

“For the sake of argument, I agree.”

“Well—­there are two kinds of donkeys.  One kind is meek and mild and will go wherever it is driven.  The other, in order to get along, must always have a bunch of carrots dangling before its eyes.  That’s you.”