‘Jemima wouldn’t have stood it,’ said Maude.

It was pleasant to be out in the open air once more, but they were in the pine groves of Woking before Maude had quite shaken off the gloom of that dark, ghost-haunted house.  ’After all, you are only twenty-seven,’ she remarked as they walked up from the station.  She had a way of occasionally taking a subject by the middle in that way.

‘What then, dear?’

’When Carlyle was only twenty-seven I don’t suppose he knew he was going to do all this.’

‘No, I don’t suppose so.’

‘And his wife—­if he were married then—­would feel as I do to you.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Then what guarantee have I that you won’t do it after all?’

‘Do what?’

‘Why, turn out a second Carlyle.’

‘Hear me swear!’ cried Frank, and they turned laughing into their own little gateway at the Lindens.

CHAPTER XXI—­THE LAST NOTE OF THE DUET

Our young married couples may feel that two is company and three is none, but there comes a little noisy intruder to break into their sweet intimacy.  The coming of the third is the beginning of a new life for them as well as for it—­a life which is more useful and more permanent, but never so concentrated as before.  That little pink thing with the blinking eyes will divert some of the love and some of the attention, and the very trouble which its coming has caused will set its mother’s heart yearning over it.  Not so the man.  Some vague resentment mixes with his pride of paternity, and his wife’s sufferings rankle in his memory when she has herself forgotten them.  His pity, his fears, his helplessness, and his discomfort, give him a share in the domestic tragedy.  It is not without cause that in some societies it is the man and not the woman who receives the condolence and the sympathy.

There came a time when Maude was bad, and there came months when she was better, and then there were indications that a day was approaching, the very thought of which was a shadow upon her husband’s life.  For her part, with the steadfast, gentle courage of a woman, she faced the future with a sweet serenity.  But to him it was a nightmare—­an actual nightmare which brought him up damp and quivering in those gray hours of the dawn, when dark shadows fall upon the spirit of man.  He had a steady nerve for that which affected himself, a nerve which would keep him quiet and motionless in a dentist’s chair, but what philosophy or hardihood can steel one against the pain which those whom we love have to endure.  He fretted and chafed, and always with the absurd delusion that his fretting and chafing were successfully concealed.  A hundred failures never convince a man how impossible it is to deceive a woman who loves him.  Maude watched him demurely, and made her plans.

‘Do you know, dear,’ said she, one evening, ’if you can get a week of your holidays now, I think it would be a very good thing for you to accept that invitation of Mr. Mildmay’s, and spend a few days in golfing at Norwich.’