for a moment wondering
just how to set this scene of reunion; the flat was not large,
comprising as it did the tiny slip of a room in which the maid slept,
the children's room, her own, and the two sitting-rooms and kitchen.
All the day she arranged and rearranged the accommodation in her head.

She was not only reluctant for Osborn, but almost shy of him; he had
left her thoughts so that it seemed impossible that he had ever had
the right to intrude, at all hours, on her privacy; impossible that it
should ever be so again. After all, there were many husbands and wives
who went their own way, led their own lives, and the outside world
never knew. To such a confraternity would she and Osborn now belong,
living under one roof, but separated, separated not only by walls, but
will.

For she did not want him any more; she could not contemplate his
assumption of the husbandly role. It sounded strange as she uttered it
aloud to herself, but there it was.

"I do not want him any more."

She thought: "Had he never gone away, had we gone on living as we
lived then, year in, year out, this would never have happened. People
don't get out of a deep rut like that unless they're helped out. But
now I've had a year to get my looks back; to sit down and think, and I
know things that I should never have guessed before."

After she had taken the baby for her morning airing on the Heath,
she left the two younger children with the maid, and went into town
to lunch. She chose again the Royal Red, but not the table behind
the pillar from which she had peered, glad of its shelter for her
shabbiness, a year ago. She took a table at the side of the room where
she could see and be seen, and she looked at the other women without
envy or hatred, with no more than a level sense of rivalry which was
almost pleasant. If she had not known how well she looked, the glances
of men would have told her. She lingered long over her coffee, enjoying
her opportunity and her freedom, and telling herself--resolved as she
was that it should not be so--"Well, it's probably my last time like
this."

She was in Regent Street after lunch, looking into a blouse shop,
when she saw close at hand the Beauty Parlour sign which brought to
her memory at once the sleek pale girl with the emerald earrings.
Something made her curious to see the girl again, and she went in, to
find her still there, the emeralds still in her beautiful close ears,
but sharper set, a year