and his careful entry.

She feigned sleep.

He knew, by tiny signs he had learnt to discover, that she was not
asleep, but he feigned belief that she was.

His bed creaked to tell her that he was getting into it, in the
darkness, by her side.

Both Marie and Osborn were still angry, sore, insulted and resentful,
and, like other married people in small homes, they must intrude upon
each other intimately, sleep side by side, wake side by side, and
remain as closely conscious of each other as if they dwelt together,
by mutual desire, in a perpetual garden of roses. True, there was a
bed in Osborn's dressing-room, but it was an uncomfortable bed of the
fold-up family, and when he came in to-night it was folded against the
wall, and he did not know exactly where its particular blankets were
kept. He looked at it, thinking, "God! If I could only sleep here for
a night or two!" But he allowed himself to be daunted by the problem
of the blankets, and he went, as usual, to the room he shared with
Marie.

But each was too angry to speak, and the presence of each was fuel to
the other's anger.

Osborn was wakened in the morning by Marie's attentions to the baby.
Though he had gone to sleep turned as completely away from her as
possible, in the night he had rolled over, and now he watched her
quietly and sulkily in the grey dawn, with just one eye opened upon
her above the rim of his bedclothes. If she looked he meant to close
his eyes again quickly, pretending sleep.

But there was something about the frailty of her figure as she sat up
in bed, turning to the table with the spirit-lamp and saucepan upon
it, a quality of wistful charm in her little undressed head, which
went towards softening him. She was quiet, too; she spoke no word, nor
looked towards him. He watched her patiently waiting for the boiling
of the milk; he watched the care with which she mixed the food; and
then she got out of bed, not minding the stark cold, and gave the
bottle to the drowsy baby. She bent over it for a minute, smoothing
its downy head with her light fingers; then she propped the bottle
comfortably for the baby, by some ingenious management of its
bed-clothing, and looked at the clock by her bedside. After she had
looked at the clock she stood hesitating for awhile and he knew what
she was deciding.

She wanted five minutes more of that warm bed after a night broken, as
usual, by the baby's demands; but it was time to get up and sweep a