and passed very low. The
noise had been colossal, like six motorcycles. Every one, used as the
place was to aeroplanes, had dashed out to the garden--every one but
Hubert. Helena, even in her disappointment, could admire his
self-restraint.

He seemed quite ignorant about it, too, when she made jokes upon the
noise, as they set out for their tramp on the Heath.

"What time about?" he said. "Before lunch?"

"Why, Hugh," she laughed. "You must have heard! It sounded like a
motor having its teeth drilled."

"No," he said. "I shouldn't have missed that. It is a sound I've
never struck!"

She thought a moment. "Why, I know," she said. "You wouldn't have
heard. Of course it was just after two and you were still keeping in
touch with the movements."

To her surprise he stopped short, and looking up, she saw his cheeks
were flushed below the eyes.

"My dear girl," he said pompously. "I enjoy your humourous way of
looking at life, but it's a quite impossible position if a wife's going
to be funny at the expense of her husband's ideals."

With which he strode onward and she fell in, a model wife, behind.

But she, of her simplicity, had meant it.

She had always admired his powers of concentration on those dull old
literary weeklies. She had not even thought of sleep.

Every wife, perhaps, should be able to see through her husband the
exact distance that he sees himself.

CHAPTER VI

GROWTH

Helena, when a year's passing had worn away the novelty of keeping
house and made its process slower, was naturally rather bored at times,
when Hubert was shut up with his work. No one could have been happier
so long as she was with her husband; she still thought him immensely
clever, which is most good for married happiness; still found their
walks and treats the very greatest fun; but in the winter especially,
there were so many gaps of idle loneliness.

Luckily the remedy was near at hand.

To a girl almost bursting with the ashamed desire for self-development
a garden suburb must be Paradise indeed. There is a natural connection
between New Art cottages with gardens round, and (let us say)
enthusiasms. The ordinary man--that tame myope who gratefully accepts
life as it is--contentedly exists in squares, crescents and straight
lines; breathing the common air and never worrying at all whether his
house, which may be number 246, has individuality or not. But the
enthusiast, whom others call by a