He was always noticeably affectionate when they got home.  Rachael, her color bright from sun and wind, would entertain him with a spirited account of the day while she dressed.

“I wish I’d gone with you; I will next time!” he invariably said.

On the next Sunday she might try another experience.  No plans to-day.  The initiative should be left to him.  Breakfast would drag along until after ten o’clock, and Mary would appear with a low question.  Were the boys to go out to the Park?  Rachael would pause, undecided.  Well, yes, Mary might take them, but bring them in early, in case Doctor Gregory wished to take them somewhere.

And ten minutes later he might jump up briskly.  Well! how about a little run up to Pelham Manor, wonderful morning—­could she go as she was?  Rachael would beg for ten minutes; she might come downstairs in seven to find him wavering.

“Would you mind if we made it a pretty short run, dear, and then if I dropped you here and went on down to the hospital for a little while?”

“Why, Warren, it was your suggestion, dear!  Why take a drive at all if you don’t feel like it!”

“Oh, it’s not that—­I’m quite willing to.  Where are the kids?”

“Mary took them out.  They’ve got to be back for naps at half-past eleven, you see.”

“I see.”  He would look at his watch.  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think I’ll do.  I’ll change and shave now—­” A pause.  His voice would drop vaguely.  “What would you like to do?” he might suggest amiably.

Such a conversation, so lacking in his old definite briskness where their holidays were concerned, would daunt Rachael with a sense of utter forlornness.  Sometimes she offered a plan, but it was invariably rejected.  There were friends who would have been delighted at an unexpected lunch call from the Gregorys, but Warren yawned and shuddered negatives when she mentioned their names.  In the end, he would go off to the hospital for an hour or two, and later would telephone to his wife to explain a longer absence:  he had met some of the boys at the club and they were rather urging him to stay to lunch; he couldn’t very well decline.

“Would you like to have me come down and join you anywhere later?” his wife might ask in the latter case.

“No, thank you, no.  I may come straight home after lunch, and in that case I’d cross you.  Boys all right?”

“Lovely.”  Rachael would sit at the telephone desk, after she had hung up the receiver, wrapped in bitter thought, a bewildered pain at her heart.  She never doubted him; to-morrow good, old, homely, trustworthy George Valentine, whose wife and children were visiting Alice’s mother in Boston, would speak of the bridge game at the club.  But with his wife waiting for him at home, his wife who lived all the six days of the week waiting for this seventh day, why did he need the society of his men friends?