Daniel taught him a lot; turned over the page of life for him, as it were, and, showing the reverse side, seemed to say:  “You were missing all that.”  Samuel gazed upwards at the handsome long nose and rich lips of his elder cousin, so experienced, so agreeable, so renowned, so esteemed, so philosophic, and admitted to himself that he had lived to the age of forty in a state of comparative boobyism.  And then he would gaze downwards at the faint patch of flour on Daniel’s right leg, and conceive that life was, and must be, life.

Not many weeks after his initiation into the cult he was startled by Constance’s preoccupied face one evening.  Now, a husband of six years’ standing, to whom it has not happened to become a father, is not easily startled by such a face as Constance wore.  Years ago he had frequently been startled, had frequently lived in suspense for a few days.  But he had long since grown impervious to these alarms.  And now he was startled again—­but as a man may be startled who is not altogether surprised at being startled.  And seven endless days passed, and Samuel and Constance glanced at each other like guilty things, whose secret refuses to be kept.  Then three more days passed, and another three.  Then Samuel Povey remarked in a firm, masculine, fact-fronting tone: 

“Oh, there’s no doubt about it!”

And they glanced at each other like conspirators who have lighted a fuse and cannot take refuge in flight.  Their eyes said continually, with a delicious, an enchanting mixture of ingenuous modesty and fearful joy: 

“Well, we’ve gone and done it!”

There it was, the incredible, incomprehensible future—­coming!

Samuel had never correctly imagined the manner of its heralding.  He had imagined in his early simplicity that one day Constance, blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and whisper—­something positive.  It had not occurred in the least like that.  But things are so obstinately, so incurably unsentimental.

“I think we ought to drive over and tell mother, on Sunday,” said Constance.

His impulse was to reply, in his grand, offhand style:  “Oh, a letter will do!”

But he checked himself and said, with careful deference:  “You think that will be better than writing?”

All was changed.  He braced every fibre to meet destiny, and to help Constance to meet it.

The weather threatened on Sunday.  He went to Axe without Constance.  His cousin drove him there in a dog-cart, and he announced that he should walk home, as the exercise would do him good.  During the drive Daniel, in whom he had not confided, chattered as usual, and Samuel pretended to listen with the same attitude as usual; but secretly he despised Daniel for a man who has got something not of the first importance on the brain.  His perspective was truer than Daniel’s.