g. Of him she could learn
without humiliation.

His arrival was later than of wont. Only at eleven o'clock, when with
disappointment she had laid aside her book to go to bed, did Tarrant's
rap sound on the window.

'I had given you up,' said Nancy.

'Yet you are quite good-tempered.'

'Why not?'

'It is the pleasant custom of wives to make a husband uncomfortable if
he comes late.'

'Then I am no true wife!' laughed Nancy.

'Something much better,' Tarrant muttered, as he threw off his overcoat.

He began to talk of ordinary affairs, and nearly half-an-hour elapsed
before any mention was made of the event that had bettered their
prospects. Nancy looked over a piece of his writing in an evening paper
which he had brought; but she could not read it with attention. The
paper fell to her lap, and she sat silent. Clearly, Tarrant would not
be the first to speak of what was in both their minds. The clock ticked;
the rain pattered without; the journalist smoked his pipe and looked
thoughtfully at the ceiling.

'Are you sorry,' Nancy asked, 'that I am no longer penniless?'

'Ah--to be sure. We must speak of that. No, I'm not sorry. If I get run
over, you and the boy--'

'Can make ourselves comfortable, and forget you; to be sure. But for the
present, and until you do get run over?'

'You wish to make changes?'

'Don't you?'

'In one or two respects, perhaps. But leave me out of the question. You
have an income of your own to dispose of; nothing oppressively splendid,
I suppose. What do you think of doing?'

'What do you advise?'

'No, no. Make your own suggestion.

Nancy smiled, hesitated, and said at length:

'I think we ought to take a house.'

'In London?'

'That's as you wish.'

'Not at all. As _you_ wish. Do you want society?'

'In moderation. And first of all, yours.

Tarrant met her eyes.

'Of my society, you have quite as much as is good for you,' he answered
amiably. 'That you should wish for acquaintances, is reasonable enough.
Take a house somewhere in the western suburbs. One or two men I know
have decent wives, and you shall meet them.'

'But you? You won't live with me?'

'You know my view of that matter.'

Nancy kept her eyes down, and reflected.

'Will it be known to everybody that we don't live together?'

'Well,' answered Tarrant, with a laugh, 'by way of example, I should
rather like it to be known; but as I know _you_ wouldn't like it, let
the appearances be as ordina