e-boy staggered in with tea, and for a while the business of
it kept them lightly occupied, and talking inconsequently; but
presently Rokeby went back to:

"So you _are_ going to see Miss Winter this evening? Look here,
Mrs. Kerr, Osborn would never forgive me if I let you go alone. I'll
take you--yes, please. Do let me! We'll both give her a surprise."

Recovering a spark of the old audacity which her prettiness used to
justify, she laughed: "No, you won't. We shall want to talk--and
_talk_. You'd be in the way."

"I solemnly swear I won't. I'll wash up and do a lot of the jobs
bachelor girls always keep for their men friends to do. I'll sit and
smoke in the kitchen. Honest, I will! There, now?"

Her laughter was real and merry. "_You_? What's come to you?"

"I hardly know," said Rokeby quickly, in a low voice.

Marie's hand and eyes were hovering critically over the dish of cakes;
youth and delicious silliness had visited her, if but for an hour, and
a curious kind of champagne happiness fizzed through her. The
earnestness of Desmond's sudden look passed her by; at the moment
there was nothing earnest in her; she was, all so suddenly, a holiday
woman out for the day. Selecting her cake, she began to eat it.

"It will be awf'ly good of you to take me there," she answered; "it
will be something to write and tell Osborn about."

"Do wives have to hunt for topics for letters, as they have to hunt
for suitable conversation, when husbands want it?"

"Oh! have you noticed that?"

"I've noticed my married friends seem to have very little of interest
to say to each other."

"Why is it?"

"I don't know. I think they give each other all they've got in a great
big lump too soon. But I don't know; how should I?"

"I wonder if I could tell you. _I_ think it's because a man
carefully robs a woman of all power to have any interest outside her
home; but at the same time he votes her home interests too dull to
talk about."

"Married life!" said Rokeby quizzically.

"But there are beautiful things in it; children, you know. I shouldn't
have said what I did."

They let a silence elapse as if to swallow up the memory of the things
Marie shouldn't have said, and after it he asked: "What time shall we
go?"

At six o'clock they were speeding down Cannon Street, along the
Strand, and the gaudier thoroughfares of the West, in a taxicab, to
Julia's flat.

Her delight at seeing Marie was obvious, but a veil of reserve see