here's nothing in it. Don't we?
Don't be cross with your poor old mother, Romer."

"That's all right. I must be off. Eight on Thursday, eh?"

She kissed him affectionately, walked with him to the landing, where she
kept him for about ten minutes complaining of the awful worry she had
had about the under-housemaid, and of the sickening impossibility of
getting a piano-tuner to attend to the instrument properly without
making any sound.

"For I'm a mass of nerves, my dear. Give my best love to dear
Valentia."

CHAPTER V

ROMER

Romer walked back, trying to throw off the irritating effect of his
mother's pin-pricks. As was his usual custom when he was a little
depressed, he went home and sat down in front of his wife's portrait. He
often sat there for an hour when she was out, looking at it. Any one
watching him would have thought he was in a state of calm and stupid
content. In reality, he was worshipping. His passion for his wife was
his one romance, his one interest, his one thought. He had been married
five years, and had never yet expressed it in words. He was one of the
unfortunate people who are not gifted with the power of expression,
either in word or look. He was practically inarticulate.

As he gazed at the picture--he was feeling a little sad--the sadness
melted away. The frail figure, bright yet dim, vaguely appearing through
vaporous curtains, holding an impossible gold flower, had the effect on
him of a beautiful Madonna on a deeply devout Catholic. It produced in
him a form of religious ecstasy. He adored her with passion, and with
the selfishness and jealousy of passion, but circumstances and his
temperament caused it to take the outward form, principally, of care for
her happiness. When she was actually present, she still dazzled him so
much that he could show his feeling only by listening to and agreeing
with every word she said, by doing what she asked him, and by trying to
protect her, often without her knowledge, from any kind of pain or
trouble. She would have been amazed had she realised the violence of his
devotion to her. Apparently cool and matter-of-fact, he was in reality a
reticent fanatic. He neither analysed nor showed his sentiment, nor did
he himself know its extent. He wondered why certain people, certain
subjects gave him pain. He trusted Valentia absolutely, nor could she in
his eyes do wrong, and it was only with the subconscious second sight of
love that he sometimes