, and a big bowl of pink roses stood upon the centre of the
breakfast table. Paul, glancing up from the pages of the _Daily
Telegraph_, became aware of something vaguely familiar yet unexpected in
his wife's face. She seemed listless, even slightly pale, and he
experienced a sudden pang of an indefinable nature. Looking back over
the past two years, he wondered if they had been as significant, as
fully crowded with reality, for Yvonne as they had been for him. In
Don's manner, when speaking of Yvonne, he had more than once detected a
sort of gentle reproof and had wondered why Don, who understood most
things, failed to perceive that Yvonne's happiness lay in her husband's
work. But, this morning, Paul was thinking more particularly about a
remark of Jules Thessaly's. Thessaly had urged him, before commencing
his second volume to spend a month in Devon. "You need it, Mario, and
your wife needs it more than you do."

Paul did not immediately broach the subject which now became uppermost
in his mind, but following some desultory conversation, he said, "I
should think Devon would be delightful just now. Suppose we run down for
a week or two."

"I should be glad," replied Yvonne. "I should have suggested it earlier,
only I knew that you could not finish _The Gates_ away from your
library." She spoke in a curiously listless way.

"Could you be ready to go on Thursday, Yvonne?"

"Yes, quite easily."

"I can work upon my notes for the autumn book in Devon better than in
London."

"But," began Yvonne, and stopped, staring unseeingly at the roses in the
bowl upon the table.

"But what, Yvonne?"

"I was about to propose a complete rest, Paul, but I know it would be
useless if the working mood is upon you."

"You realise what it means to me, Yvonne. I should no more be justified
in laying down my pen whilst there was more work to do than a soldier
would be justified in laying down his sword in the heat of battle. You
do not feel that this task which I have taken up has made a gulf between
us?"

"It has done so in a sense," replied Yvonne, crumbling a fragment of
bread between her fingers. "But I have never been so foolish as to
become jealous of your work."

"I might have been in the army and stationed on the other side of the
world," said Paul laughing.

"I am not complaining about your work, Paul."

"Yet you are not entirely happy."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. I sometimes feel that you are not