seen borne up
the long stairs.... He very nearly cried out, "Bring it in," not
realising that he was the corpse.

"Why, it's you, Ruth!" he cried in vague annoyance.

"Of course it is," she laughed. "Who else would it be, you stupid boy?
Perhaps you mean, though, you don't want me?"

"Of course I always want you, old girl." This hideous geniality, he
felt, was the worst part of their whole constant warfare, recalling by
an empty mockery that they had once been such devoted chums; still
could be, possibly, if they were only parted. "I'm not working," he
added almost grudgingly, as though he wished he had got that excuse.

But Ruth, indecision personified, still hovered restlessly in
mid-carpet. "Are you quite sure you're not, Hugh?" she said. "If you
_are_, do say so. I've been alone all the evening till now, so it
won't hurt me to go on like that till bedtime. I am used to it, you
see!" and she smiled patiently.

Hubert looked at her, wondering why she possessed this curious gift of
annoying him. Did she try, or was she really meaning to be kind? Her
face, set and hard already, gave no hint. She smiled with her lips but
her eyes did not light up. There was something tragic in her looks.
She was not ugly, yet she meant absolutely nothing. She was just a
passable statue, into which the artist had failed somehow to put any
life. She smiled doggedly with her lips, and she clearly was not
happy. She had never lived.

She went on wanly smiling reassurance at him, as one who should say, "I
am not to be considered," till he schooled his voice to answer.
Whatever happened, he would not have another scene on this night which
seemed in some way big with a decision.

"It'll be nice to have a little chat, old girl," he said genially.
"Sit down and make yourself comfy."

She moved timidly towards an armchair with the mien of a scolded,
nervous child. "If you're quite, quite sure?" she quavered. "I wish I
felt certain you hadn't been just thinking you would settle down, now
Mr. Boyd had gone. I should be absolutely happy with my Patience."

"Boyd was in great form," Hubert answered. He could not trust himself
to assure her further.

"What did he say then?" and she let herself down into the chair
staidly. She was not like a woman of thirty-eight. Women of
thirty-eight nowadays are young, almost unfashionably young, and Ruth
was pathetically old. She had given her youth to her mother: she was
prepared