force which made her feel quite sick.
Better that she herself should do this thing than that her own child
should be deprived of air and light and all the just environment of her
youth and beauty. 'She must come back--she must listen to me!' she
thought. 'We will begin together; we will start a nice little creche of
our own, or--perhaps Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular
work on one of her committees.'

Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run positively
cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if Thyme had inherited
her grandfather's single-mindedness? Martin was giving proof of it.
Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and then set in again.
Surely, surely, it could not have done that! With longing, yet with
dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's latchkey. It came at its
appointed time.

Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she could.
She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually: "Thyme has got a
whim into her head."

"What whim?"

"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her going
about so much with Martin."

Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love
lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.

"The Sanitist?" he said; "ah! Well?"

"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had a
telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."

She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He
took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real
affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other
people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally
disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder
and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a
certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in the
Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive and
assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, "No, I'm
damned!"

In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude towards
this situation and all the difference between two classes of the
population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm damned!"
Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he could be
damned he had been obliged to wrestle