Samuel never, or hardly ever, set himself to meditate upon the problem whether or not life had come up to his expectations.  But he had, at times, strange sensations which he did not analyze, and which approached nearer to ecstasy than any feeling of Constance’s.  Thus, when he was in one of his dark furies, molten within and black without, the sudden thought of his wife’s unalterable benignant calm, which nothing could overthrow, might strike him into a wondering cold.  For him she was astoundingly feminine.  She would put flowers on the mantelpiece, and then, hours afterwards, in the middle of a meal, ask him unexpectedly what he thought of her ‘garden;’ and he gradually divined that a perfunctory reply left her unsatisfied; she wanted a genuine opinion; a genuine opinion mattered to her.  Fancy calling flowers on a mantelpiece a ‘garden’!  How charming, how childlike!  Then she had a way, on Sunday mornings, when she descended to the parlour all ready for chapel, of shutting the door at the foot of the stairs with a little bang, shaking herself, and turning round swiftly as if for his inspection, as if saying:  “Well, what about this?  Will this do?” A phenomenon always associated in his mind with the smell of kid gloves!  Invariably she asked him about the colours and cut of her dresses.  Would he prefer this, or that?  He could not take such questions seriously until one day he happened to hint, merely hint, that he was not a thorough-going admirer of a certain new dress—­it was her first new dress after the definite abandonment of crinolines.  She never wore it again.  He thought she was not serious at first, and remonstrated against a joke being carried too far.  She said:  “It’s not a bit of use you talking, I shan’t wear it again.”  And then he so far appreciated her seriousness as to refrain, by discretion, from any comment.  The incident affected him for days.  It flattered him; it thrilled him; but it baffled him.  Strange that a woman subject to such caprices should be so sagacious, capable, and utterly reliable as Constance was!  For the practical and commonsense side of her eternally compelled his admiration.  The very first example of it—­her insistence that the simultaneous absence of both of them from the shop for half an hour or an hour twice a day would not mean the immediate downfall of the business—­had remained in his mind ever since.  Had she not been obstinate—­in her benevolent way—­against the old superstition which he had acquired from his employers, they might have been eating separately to that day.  Then her handling of her mother during the months of the siege of Paris, when Mrs. Baines was convinced that her sinful daughter was in hourly danger of death, had been extraordinarily fine, he considered.  And the sequel, a card for Constance’s birthday, had completely justified her attitude.

Sometimes some blundering fool would jovially exclaim to them: 

“What about that baby?”

Or a woman would remark quietly:  “I often feel sorry you’ve no children.”