Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to bottom, from laundry to linen closet.  Suffice it to say that the inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed over.

“It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear,” was her final comment.  “But you are wise in providing for the future.”

“For the future?” Honora repeated.

Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.

“When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will—­soon,” she said, smiling at Honora’s colour.  “Sometimes it all comes back to me—­my own joy when Joshua was a baby.  I was very foolish about him, no doubt.  Annie and Gwendolen tell me so.  I wouldn’t even let the nurse sit up with him when he was getting his teeth.  Mercy!” she exclaimed, glancing at the enamelled watch on her gown,—­for long practice had enabled her to tell the time upside down,—­“we’ll be late for the train, my dear.”

After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her window, looking out on the park.  The afternoon sunlight had the silvery tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines; and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped along the strip of sidewalk.

Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had spoken?  It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking in her.  Children!  A home!  Why was it that she did not want children?  Why should such a natural longing be absent in her?  Her mind went back to the days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large families.  She had always associated marriage with children—­until she got married.  And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt’s own experience of it:  Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to her, it was faint and shadowy indeed?  Why were not her spirit and her hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?

The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora did not mention it to her husband.  Circumstances were her excuse:  he had had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked disinclination for the discussion of household matters.  It was not until the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually uncommunicative and morose.  Just as electrical disturbances are said to be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were synchronous with a depression in the market.

“I wish you’d learn to go a little slow, Honora,” he said one evening.  “The bills are pretty stiff this month.  You don’t seem to have any idea of the value of money.”