Vera was caught unawares by this magnificent and overwhelming experience, just as she stooped to finger the music-stool.  A fig for the cigar-cabinet!  A fig for her husband’s objections!  After all she was a grown-up woman (twenty-nine or thirty), and entitled to a certain freedom.  She was not and would not be a slave.  It would look perfect in the drawing-room.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

‘Yes, Mrs Cheswardine.  A unique thing, quite unique.  Penkethman!’

And Vera followed Penkethman to a cash desk and received half-a-guinea out of a five-pound note.

‘I want it carefully packed,’ said Vera.

‘Yes, ma’am.  It will be delivered in the morning.’

She was just beginning to realize that she had been under the sinister influence of the ecstasy, and that she had not bought the cigar-cabinet, and that she had practically no more money, and that Stephen’s rule against credit was the strictest of all his rules, when she caught sight of Mr Charles Woodruff buying toys, doubtless for his nephews and nieces.

Mr Woodruff was the bachelor friend of the family.  He had loved Vera before Stephen loved her, and he was still attached to her.  Stephen and he were chums of the most advanced kind.  Why!  Stephen and Vera thought nothing of bickering in front of Mr Woodruff, who rated them both and sided with neither.

‘Hello!’ said Woodruff, flushing, and moving his long, clumsy limbs when she touched him on the shoulder.  ’I’m just buying a few toys.’

She helped him to buy toys, and then he asked her to go and have tea with him at the newly-opened Sub Rosa Tea Rooms, in Machin Street.  She agreed, and, in passing the music-stool, gave a small parcel which she was carrying to Penkethman, and told him he might as well put it in the music-stool.  She was glad to have tea with Charlie Woodruff.  It would distract her, prevent her from thinking.  The ecstasy had almost died out, and she had a violent desire not to think.

III

A terrible blow fell upon her the next morning.  Stephen had one of his bad colds, one of his worst.  The mere cold she could have supported with fortitude, but he was forced to remain indoors, and his presence in the house she could not support with fortitude.  The music-stool would be sure to arrive before lunch, and he would be there to see it arrive.  The ecstasy had fully expired now, and she had more leisure to think than she wanted.  She could not imagine what mad instinct had compelled her to buy the music-stool. (Once out of the shop these instincts always are difficult to imagine.) She knew that Stephen would be angry.  He might perhaps go to the length of returning the music-stool whence it came.  For, though she was a pretty and pampered woman, Stephen had a way, in the last resort, of being master of his own house.  And she could not even placate him with the gift of a cigar-cabinet.  She could not buy a five-guinea cigar-cabinet with ten and six.  She had no other money in the world.  She never had money, yet money was always running through her fingers.  Stephen treated her generously, gave her an ample allowance, but he would under no circumstances permit credit, nor would he pay her allowance in advance.  She had nothing to expect till the New Year.