nd Orgreave will have to manage it
between them; and of course they wouldn't dream of trying to cut off the
spondulicks. Not that I should let that stop me if they did."

"Yes, it's all very well for _you_ to talk like that!" said Lois, with a
swift change of tone. "You've got partners to do your work for you, and
you've got money.... Have you written to mother, Laurencine?"

George objected to his wife making excuses. His gaze faltered.

"Of course, darling!" Laurencine answered eagerly, agreeing with her
sister's differentiation between George and Everard. "No, not yet. But
I'm going to to-night. Everard, we ought to be off."

"I've got a taxi outside," said Lucas.

"A taxi?" she repeated in a disappointed tone. And then, as an
afterthought: "Well, I have to call at Debenham's."

The fact was that Laurencine wanted to be seen walking with her military
officer in some well-frequented thoroughfare. They lived at Hampstead.

Lois rang the bell.

"Ask nurse to bring the children down, please--at once," she told the
parlourmaid.

"So this is the new tea-gown, if I mistake not!" observed Lucas in the
pause. "_Tres chic_! I suppose Laurencine's told you all about the
chauffeur being run off with against his will by a passionate virgin.
_I_ couldn't start the car this morning myself."

"You never could start a car by yourself, my boy," said George. "What's
this about the passionate virgin?"

V

George woke up in the middle of the night. Lois slept calmly; he could
just hear her soft breathing. He thought of all the occupied bedrooms,
of the health of children, the incalculable quality in wives, the touchy
stupidity of nurses and servants. The mere human weight of the household
oppressed him terribly. And he thought of the adamant of landlords, the
shifty rapacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the mere
pompous foolishness of Government departments, the arrogance of Jew
patrons, and the terrifying complexity of problems of architecture on a
large scale. He was the Atlas supporting a vast world a thousand times
more complex than any problem of architecture. He wondered how he did
it. But he did do it, alone; and he kept on doing it. Let him shirk the
burden, and not a world but an entire universe would crumble. If he told
Lois that he was going to leave her, she would collapse; she would do
dreadful things. He was indispensable not only at home but
professionally. All was upon his shoulders and upon