Oh, believe me, Nell, it is an awful thing to be a wife.—Charlotte Bront?.  
Lettice, dragging up the steps of No. 33 Canning Street, paused to unfasten her waterproof and shake her wet umbrella. It was raining, it seemed to have been raining ever since she got back to town, chill November rain, a yellow haze down every street; and the weather matched her mood. Ever since April she had been trying to shut her eyes to the future, but as time drew on it refused to be ignored. It lay in wait outside the Museum, it came home with her in the Tube, it took possession of her attic, it was translating itself with appalling rapidity into the present, and she was no more ready for it than she had been months ago.
 
Well! she had still a week's grace, and anything might happen in a week. Lettice detached her mind with an effort, picked up a letter from the hall table, and came upstairs at a snail's pace, reading it. Her own room she expected to be dark, so with her usual deaf and blind absorption in anything to read she lingered outside on the landing. She became aware, as she stood, of another scent mingling with that of the lamp, of another clearer light than its brownish obscurity, but her eyes remained glued to her letter; not till she had reached the end did she slowly raise them from the sheet, and then she saw her door open, her room full of firelight, a white cloth gleaming, a dark figure standing in the entrance watching her with a smile.
 
"Buenas noches, se?orita," said Gardiner, politely removing his cigarette.
 
[Pg 295]
 
"O-o-oh—it's you," said Lettice with striking originality.
 
"The curse is come upon me!" suggested Gardiner. His smile widened. "Exactly. You look so pleased!"
 
Lettice, after that first involuntary pause of dismay, had come into the room; she stood by the table, slowly, slowly drawing off her gloves.
 
"Well, of course I'm pleased; but why, why, why didn't you let me know? You said you weren't coming out till next week!"
 
"So sorry, but I didn't know myself. It was little Scott worked the oracle—said I was in a bad way or something." Lettice said nothing, but her chin had a mutinous cock. "Shall I go back again?"
 
"If you'd let me know in time," said Lettice, "I'd have got you something nice for tea. Now you'll have to put up with what there is."
 
That minute offended voice, that reproachful pianissimo drawl! Gardiner laughed out.
 
"Lettice, you're inimitable! I swear you haven't turned a hair! Do you know—do you know you've got the same button off the same coat?"
 
"Well, you wouldn't expect me to have the same button off another coat, would you?"
 
"I would not have you in any single particular in any degree different from what you are now," Gardiner declared. He dropped into a chair. "As a matter of fact, they shot me out yesterday; and if it comes to letting people know, I went straight off to Starbridge under the impression I should find you in the bosom of your family. I was shown in right on top of a Belgian work party. Awful. I came out again with my tail between my legs. That upset I couldn't even face you. I spent the night in the fields."
 
"It was raining."
 
"Quite; it was. I was under a tarpaulin on top of a stack. Oh yes, thanks, I slept like a hog. I've been dropping off at intervals ever since, in the train or any old place. Making up for lost time, I suppose."
 
[Pg 296]
 
His speech ended in a yawn. Lettice stole a glance at him out of the tail of her eye. "Were you sleeping badly right up to the end?" she asked.
 
"Yes; it's been rather rotten. Never mind, all over now. It's good to be out. Brrr! You leave that toasting fork alone. drop it! My job. You're tired; you've been fagging all day in the B.M. Siéntese usted, se?orita."
 
"You'll burn it," cried Lettice, defensively holding on. He looked up lazily; his black eyes were melting soft, his voice a seductive murmur.
 
"Ah! prendita mía, don't you know I'm going to make your toast for you every evening of your life?"
 
Lettice was extinguished. She sat down, unwilling but unresisting. He could make toast, and he could do what was far more difficult and unusual—make her obey him. He spoke lightly, but he was watching her all the time; he beset her with his eyes. They said bold things, but he did not press them; he made her color, and he laughed, yet he did not touch her. Why he did it? That was quite plain; he was hoarding up his happiness, playing cat and mouse, holding her life in his hand, as he had sworn he could, without closing his fingers on it. Lettice knew not whether to be glad or sorry at the respite.
 
"Have you seen Mr. Gardiner yet?" she asked. She preferred talking to being watched.
 
"Not yet. I'm booked for Woodlands to-night, but I thought I'd see you first and present him with our plans ready made; he flurries himself over anything like a discussion, dear old boy. Bet you sixpence you don't guess what I mean to do?" Lettice looked inquiring. "No; not enlist. This hand does me out of that. But I've a job in my mind's eye that will do me quite as well or even better. What do you say to the Secret Service? Don't you dare screw your nose up at me!" He was laughing at her again. "Seriously, you know, I'm cut out for it. I pass anywhere as a Spaniard, and though I say it, I have quite a pretty turn for finesse. The padre at the prison, Roche his name was, has a father who's a big brass hat in that line, and he's [Pg 297]giving me a leg up. I shall go directly I'm fit. I'm still pretty frail; I wouldn't trust myself not to leg it out of a tight place, which at best would be ignominious, and might lead to a handy wall and a firing squad—oh, wouldn't suit my book at all. No. I give myself a fat month. I've certain plans for that month which I propose presently to lay before you. You go raspberry-pink when you blush, L?titia Jane; did you know it?"
 
"Will you have some more tea?" asked Lettice repressively.
 
"No, I will not have some more tea. No, and I won't have a cigarette either. You are a little liar, you hate smoke. I got that out of that pretty sister of yours—by the way, I think I can get round your people without much trouble; I'm rather a dog, you know, when I give my mind to it. Always well to be on good terms with your in-laws—but that's not the point at present. I've certain plans for this next month, as I said; but before we discuss them this house will go into committee on ways and means. The sad fact is that, bar a few pounds in the bank, I'm a blooming pauper. Every cent I possess went with the Bellevue. I suppose a grateful country will support me while I'm lying in the bosom of the Hun—What are you looking at me like that for?"
 
"Don't you know?"
 
"Know what?"
 
"About your, your—your what do you call it."
 
"My—?"
 
"It was in Denis's letter. I've just heard from him. About Dot O'Connor."
 
"Lucid, very," said Gardiner. "Get a move on, darling. Steady over the stones. What about Dot O'Connor?"
 
"Well, I'm telling you as fast as I can. You, you, you do hurry me so," Lettice complained. She took breath and tried again. "She, she—it was her will. You heard she left him a lot of money for his old aeroplanes?"
 
Gardiner nodded. "Yes, that was in The Mail. 'Bequest to an Airman.' Roche told me. I was very glad[Pg 298] about it; poor dear old chap, it'll be something to take his mind off. But I don't see—"
 
"Well, she's left you some too. To show her gratitude for your consideration."
 
"How much? Five thousand? Good Lord! I say, Lettice, I can't possibly take it!" Lettice was silent. "Don't you agree with me?"
 
"No. I think you should."
 
"After all that's happened?"
 
"Well, you never did hate her, did you?" said Lettice. "And she didn't hate you, at any rate not at the last. She'd be sorry if you refused."
 
"No, I never hated her," said Gardiner. He lay back, thinking. "I say, Lettice."
 
"Well?"
 
"I say, I was cut up over that business. Weren't you?" Lettice nodded. He leaned forward, fingering the fringe of her tea-cloth. "Not for Denis's sake, I don't mean, but for her own. I—I liked her, you know. You couldn't help feeling she ought to have been such a jolly kid!"
 
"I owe her a good deal," said Lettice on a rare impulse.
 
"You do?"
 
"She stuck a knife into a German for me."
 
Gardiner looked up quickly. "In time?"
 
"If it hadn't been I shouldn't be here," said Lettice very concisely.
 
"H'm," said Gardiner. His face was expressionless. Lettice wondered what he was thinking. She was apt to go astray in other people's thoughts where they concerned herself, because she habitually underrated her own significance. She wished she had not told him. She had never told Denis. She scourged herself for giving confidences unasked.
 
There came a pause. Gardiner seemed deep in thought. Lettice with a darkened face was noiselessly putting cups and saucers together. She hoped to get out of the room without attracting his attention, but he shot out of his chair in time to open the door.
 
[Pg 299]
 
"Where are you off to with those things?"
 
"It's Beatrice's afternoon out, and I'm going to carry them down into the basement," said Lettice in an uninviting hurry. She was afraid he would offer to come too, but he did not, nor did her tone provoke a smile.
 
"Hurry up back, then, I want to talk to you," was all he said.
 
Lettice did not hurry back; she stayed to wash up, a work of supererogation, found half-a-dozen other unnecessary things to do, loitered on the stairs, delayed on the landing. She had at last to force herself to the door against a reluctance like a pain; and then she halted on the threshold. He had fallen asleep.
 
Lettice crossed the floor with her soft, slow step and stood looking down on him. Awake, except for being thinner, he was not so much changed from his old self; asleep, he showed the ravages of the past twelvemonth—helplessly, openly. Lettice knew without being told that he hated to be watched in his sleep for th............