d effectively remember that he
had over three hundred pounds a week coming in. Still, the bills did
somewhat dash him, and he left them without getting to the bottom of the
pile. He thought he would voyage through the house, but he got no
further than his wife's boudoir. The boudoir also had an enormous desk,
and on it also was a pile of papers. He offended the marital code by
picking up the first one, which read as follows:--"Madam. We beg to
enclose as requested estimate for buffet refreshments for one hundred
and fifty persons, and hire of one hundred gilt cane chairs and bringing
and taking away same. Trusting to be honoured with your commands--" This
document did more than alarm him; it shook him. Clearly Eve was planning
a great reception. Even to attend a reception was torture to him, always
had been; but to be the host at a reception...! No, his mind refused to
contemplate a prospect so appalling. Surely Eve ought to have consulted
him before beginning to plan a reception. Why a reception? He glimpsed
matters that might be even worse than a reception. And this was the same
woman who had so touchingly arranged his clothes.

IV

He was idly regarding himself in an immense mirror that topped the
fireplace, and thinking that despite the stylishness of his accoutrement
he presented the appearance of a rather tousled and hairy person of
unromantic middle-age, when, in the glass, he saw the gilded door open
and a woman enter the room. He did not move,--only stared at the image.
He knew the woman intimately, profoundly, exhaustively, almost totally.
He knew her as one knows the countryside in which one has grown up,
where every feature of the scene has become a habit of the perceptions.
And yet he had also a strange sensation of seeing her newly, of seeing
her for the first time in his life and estimating her afresh. In a flash
he had compared her, in this boudoir, with Lady Massulam in Lady
Massulam's bungalow. In a flash all the queer, frightening romance of 2
a.m. in Frinton had swept through his mind. Well, she had not the
imposingness nor the mystery of Lady Massulam, nor perhaps the challenge
of Lady Massulam; she was very much more prosaic to him. But still he
admitted that she had an effect on him, that he reacted to her presence,
that she was at any rate at least as incalculable as Lady Massulam, and
that there might be bits of poetry gleaming in her prose, and that
after a quarter of a century he had no