Waythorn watched him in a kind of fascination.  What was he thinking of—­only of the flavor of the coffee and the liqueur?  Had the morning’s meeting left no more trace in his thoughts than on his face?  Had his wife so completely passed out of his life that even this odd encounter with her present husband, within a week after her remarriage, was no more than an incident in his day?  And as Waythorn mused, another idea struck him:  had Haskett ever met Varick as Varick and he had just met?  The recollection of Haskett perturbed him, and he rose and left the restaurant, taking a circuitous way out to escape the placid irony of Varick’s nod.

It was after seven when Waythorn reached home.  He thought the footman who opened the door looked at him oddly.

“How is Miss Lily?” he asked in haste.

“Doing very well, sir.  A gentleman—­”

“Tell Barlow to put off dinner for half an hour,” Waythorn cut him off, hurrying upstairs.

He went straight to his room and dressed without seeing his wife.  When he reached the drawing-room she was there, fresh and radiant.  Lily’s day had been good; the doctor was not coming back that evening.

At dinner Waythorn told her of Sellers’s illness and of the resulting complications.  She listened sympathetically, adjuring him not to let himself be overworked, and asking vague feminine questions about the routine of the office.  Then she gave him the chronicle of Lily’s day; quoted the nurse and doctor, and told him who had called to inquire.  He had never seen her more serene and unruffled.  It struck him, with a curious pang, that she was very happy in being with him, so happy that she found a childish pleasure in rehearsing the trivial incidents of her day.

After dinner they went to the library, and the servant put the coffee and liqueurs on a low table before her and left the room.  She looked singularly soft and girlish in her rosy pale dress, against the dark leather of one of his bachelor armchairs.  A day earlier the contrast would have charmed him.

He turned away now, choosing a cigar with affected deliberation.

“Did Haskett come?” he asked, with his back to her.

“Oh, yes—­he came.”

“You didn’t see him, of course?”

She hesitated a moment.  “I let the nurse see him.”

That was all.  There was nothing more to ask.  He swung round toward her, applying a match to his cigar.  Well, the thing was over for a week, at any rate.  He would try not to think of it.  She looked up at him, a trifle rosier than usual, with a smile in her eyes.

“Ready for your coffee, dear?”

He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the coffee-pot.  The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness.  How light and slender she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next!  She seemed a creature all compact of harmonies.  As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship.  They were his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light haze of hair, the lips and eyes....