very
nice prints in the City, framed and quite cheap.'

'Yes, but everything counts. Well, we will talk it over, as you say. You
know we must be careful.'

The servant came in with the supper, a tin of biscuits, a glass of milk
for the mistress, and a modest pint of beer for the master, with a
little cheese and butter. Afterwards Edward smoked two pipes of
honeydew, and they went quietly to bed; Mary going first, and her
husband following a quarter of an hour later, according to the ritual
established from the first days of their marriage. Front and back doors
were locked, the gas was turned off at the meter, and when Darnell got
upstairs he found his wife already in bed, her face turned round on the
pillow.

She spoke softly to him as he came into the room.

'It would be impossible to buy a presentable bed at anything under one
pound eleven, and good sheets are dear, anywhere.'

He slipped off his clothes and slid gently into bed, putting out the
candle on the table. The blinds were all evenly and duly drawn, but it
was a June night, and beyond the walls, beyond that desolate world and
wilderness of grey Shepherd's Bush, a great golden moon had floated up
through magic films of cloud, above the hill, and the earth was filled
with a wonderful light between red sunset lingering over the mountain
and that marvellous glory that shone into the woods from the summit of
the hill. Darnell seemed to see some reflection of that wizard
brightness in the room; the pale walls and the white bed and his wife's
face lying amidst brown hair upon the pillow were illuminated, and
listening he could almost hear the corncrake in the fields, the fern-owl
sounding his strange note from the quiet of the rugged place where the
bracken grew, and, like the echo of a magic song, the melody of the
nightingale that sang all night in the alder by the little brook. There
was nothing that he could say, but he slowly stole his arm under his
wife's neck, and played with the ringlets of brown hair. She never
moved, she lay there gently breathing, looking up to the blank ceiling
of the room with her beautiful eyes, thinking also, no doubt, thoughts
that she could not utter, kissing her husband obediently when he asked
her to do so, and he stammered and hesitated as he spoke.

They were nearly asleep, indeed Darnell was on the very eve of dreaming,
when she said very softly--

'I am afraid, darling, that we could never afford it.' And he heard her