I Exactly a week passed, and Easter had come, before Rachel could set out upon an enterprise which she both longed and hated to perform. In the meantime the situation in the house remained stationary¹, except that after a relapse Louis' condition had gradually improved. She nursed him; he permitted himself to be nursed; she slept near him every night; no scene of irritation² passed between them. But nothing was explained; even the fact that Rachel on the Saturday morning had overtaken Louis instead of meeting him—a detail which in secret considerably³ puzzled Louis, since it implied that his wife had been in the house when he left it—even this was not explained; as for the motor-car, Louis, absorbed, had scarcely noticed it, and Rachel did not mention it. She went on from one day into the next, proud, self-satisfied, sure of her strength and her position, indifferently scornful of Louis, and yet fatally stricken; she knew not in the least what was to be done, and so she waited for Destiny. Louis had to stop in bed for five days. His relapse worried Dr. Yardley, who, however, like many doctors, was kept in complete ignorance of the truth; Rachel was ashamed to confess that her husband had monstrously⁴ taken advantage of her absence to rise up and dress and go out; and Louis had said no word. On the Friday he was permitted to sit in a chair in the bedroom, and on Saturday he had the freedom of the house. It surprised Rachel that on the Saturday he had not dashed for the street, for after the exploit of the previous Saturday she was ready to expect anything. Had he done so she would not have interfered⁵; he was really convalescent, and also the number of white stripes over his face and hair had diminished. In the afternoon he reclined on the Chesterfield to read, and fell asleep. Then it was that Rachel set out upon her enterprise. She said not a word to Louis, but instructed Mrs. Tams to inform the master, if he inquired, that she had gone over to Knype to see Mr. Maldon.
 
"Are you a friend of Mester Maldon's?" asked the grey-haired slattern who answered her summons at the door of Julian's lodgings⁶ in Granville Street, Knype. There was a challenge in the woman's voice. Rachel accepted it at once.
 
"Yes, I am," she said, with decision.
 
"Well, I don't know as I want any o' Mester Maldon's friends here," said the landlady⁷ loudly. "Mester Maldon's done a flit from here, Mester Maldon has; and," coming out on to the pavement and pointing upward to a broken pane⁸ in the first-floor window, "that's a bit o' his fancy work afore he flitted!"
 
Rachel put her lips together.
 
"Can you give me his new address?"
 
"Can I give yer his new address? Pr'aps I can and pr'aps I canna, but I dunna see why I should waste my breath on Mester Maldon's friends—that I dunna! And I wunna!"
 
Rachel walked away. Before she reached the end of the frowsy street, whose meanness and monotony of tiny-bow-windows exemplified intensely the most deplorable characteristics of a district where brutish licence is decreasing, she was overtaken by a lanky⁹ girl in a pinafore.
 
"If ye please, miss, Mester Maldon's gone to live at 29 Birches Street, 'anbridge."
 
Having made this announcement, the girl ran off, with a short giggle¹⁰.
 
Rachel, had to walk half a mile to reach the tram-route. This re-visiting of her native town, which she had quitted only a few weeks earlier, seemed to her like the sad resumption of an existence long forgotten. She was self-conscious and hoped that she would not encounter the curiosity of any of her Knype acquaintances. She felt easier when she was within the sheltering car and rumbling¹¹ and jerking through the gloomy carnival¹² of Easter Saturday afternoon in Knype and Cauldon on the way to Hanbridge.
 
After leaving the car in Crown Square, she had to climb through all the western quarter of Hanbridge to the very edge of the town, on the hummock¹³ that separates it from the Axe¹⁴ Moorlands. Birches Street, as she had guessed, was in the suburb known as Birches Pike. It ran right to the top of the hill, and the upper portion consisted of new cottage-houses in groups of two or three, with vacant lots between. Why should Julian have chosen Birches Street for residence, seeing that his business was in Knype? It was a repellent street; it was out even of the little world where sordidness¹⁵ is at any rate dignified¹⁶ by tradition and anaemic ideals can support each other in close companionship. It had neither a past nor a future. The steep end of it was an horizon of cloud. The April east wind blew the smoke of Hanbridge right across it.
 
In this east wind men in shirt-sleeves, and women with aprons¹⁷ over their heads, stood nonchalantly at cottage gates contemplating¹⁸ the vacuum of leisure. On two different parcels of land teams of shrieking¹⁹ boys were playing football, with piles of caps and jackets to serve as goal-posts. To the left, in a clough, was an enormous yellow marlpit, with pools of water in its depths, and gangways of planks²⁰ along them, and a few overturned wheelbarrows lying here and there. A group of men drove at full speed up the street in a dogcart behind a sweating cob, stopped violently at the summit, and, taking watches from pockets, began to let pigeons out of baskets. The pigeons rose in wide circles and were lost in the vast dome²¹ of melancholy²² that hung over the district.
 
 
II
No. 29 was the second house from the top, new, and already in decay. It and its attached twin were named "Prospect²³ Villas²⁴" in vermilion tiles on the yellowish-red bricks of the façade. Hot, and yet chilled by the wind, Rachel hesitated a moment at the gate, suddenly realizing the perils²⁵ of her mission. And then she saw Julian Maldon standing²⁶ in the bay-window of the ground floor; he was eating. Simultaneously²⁷ he recognized her.
 
She thought, "I can't go back now."
 
He came sheepishly to the front door and asked her to walk in.
 
"Who'd have thought of seeing you?" he exclaimed. "You must take me as I am. I've only just moved in."
 
"I've been to your old address," she said, smiling, with an attempt at animation²⁸.
 
"A rare row I had there!" he murmured.
 
She understood, with a pang²⁹ of compassion³⁰ and yet with feminine disdain³¹, the horrible thing that his daily existence was. No wonder he would never allow Mrs. Maldon to go and see him! The spectacle of his secret squalor would have desolated³² the old lady.
 
"Don't take any notice of all this," he said apologetically, as he preceded her into the room where she had seen him standing. "I'm not straight yet.... Not that it matters. By the way, take a seat, will you?"
 
Rachel courageously³³ sat down.
 
Just as there were no curtains to the windows, so there was no carpet on the planked floor. A few pieces of new, cheap, ignoble³⁴ furniture half filled the room. In one corner was a sofa-bedstead covered with an army blanket, in the middle a crimson-legged deal table, partly covered with a dirty cloth, and on the cloth were several apples, an orange, and a hunk of brown bread—his meal. Although he had only just "moved in," dust had had time to settle thickly on all the furniture. No pictures of any kind hid the huge sunflower that made the pattern of the wall-paper. In the hearth³⁵, which lacked a fender, a small fire was expiring.
 
"Ye see," said Julian, "I only eat when I'm hungry. It's a good plan. So I'm eating now. I've turned vegetarian³⁶. There's naught³⁷ like it. I've chucked all that guzzling³⁸ an swilling³⁹ business. It's no good. I never touch a drop of liquor, nor a morsel⁴⁰ of fleshmeat. Nor smoke, either. When you come to think of it, smoking's a disgustin............