e British stage became synonymous
with fluffy heads and whirling legs and jokes she could not understand.
The late hours made her feel very tired, and on their way home Albert
would find her sleepy and unresponsive. They always went by taxi from
Lewisham station, and instead of taking the passionate opportunities of
the darkness, she would sink her heavy head against his breast, holding
his arm with both her tired hands. "Let me be, dear, let me be," she
would murmur when he tried to rouse her--"this is what I love best."

She told herself that it was because she was so tired that she often
felt depressed and wakeful at nights. Raymond Avenue was not noisy,
indeed it was nearly as quiet as Ansdore, but on some nights Joanna lay
awake from Bertie's last kiss till the crashing entrance of the Girl to
pull up her blinds in the morning. At nights, sometimes, a terrible
clearness came to her. This visit to her lover's house was showing her
more of his character than she had learned in all the rest of their
acquaintance. She could not bear to realize that he was selfish and
small-minded, though, now she came to think of it, she had always been
aware of it in some degree. She had never pretended to herself that he
was good and noble--she had loved him for something quite
different--because he was young and had brought her back her own youth,
because he had a handsome face and soft, dark eyes, because in spite of
all his cheek and knowingness he had in her sight a queer, appealing
innocence.... He was like a child, even if it was a spoilt, selfish
child. When she held his dark head in the crook of her arm, he was her
child, her little boy.... And perhaps one day she would hold, through
her love for him, a real child there, a child who was really innocent
and helpless and weak--a child without grossness to scare her or
hardness to wound her--her own child, born of her own body.

But though she loved him, this constant expression of his worst points
could not fail to give her a feeling of chill. Was this the way he would
behave in their home when they were married? Would he speak to her as he
spoke to his mother? Would he speak to their children so?... She could
not bear to think it, and yet she could not believe that marriage would
change him all through. What if their marriage made them both
miserable?--made them like some couples she had known on the Marsh,
nagging and hating each other. Was she a fool to think of marrying
hi