ays makes me feel quite sick."

Sabre laughed. "Well, I expect poor old Low Jinks feels pretty sick
too."

"She enjoys it."

"What, sitting there with a knee like a muffin? I had a look at her just
now. Don't you think she might have one of those magazines to read? She
looks pretty sorry for herself."

Signs of "flying up." "You haven't given her a magazine, have you?"

"No--I haven't. But I told her I would after dinner."

"If you don't mind you won't. Rebecca has plenty to occupy her time. She
can perfectly well clean the silver and things like that, and she has
her sewing. She has upset the house quite enough with her leg stuck out
on a chair all day without reading magazines."

And then in the extraordinary way in which discussions between them were
suddenly lifted by Mabel on to unsuspected grievances against him, Sabre
suddenly found himself confronted with, "You know how she hurt her knee,
I suppose?"

He knew the tone. "No. My fault, was it?"

"Yes. As it happens, it was your fault--to do with you."

"Good lord! However did I manage to hurt Low Jinks's knee?"

"She did it bringing in your bicycle."

He thought, "Now what on earth is this leading up to?" During the weeks
of his separation from Mabel, thinking often of Nona, he had caused
himself to think from her to Mabel. His reasoning and reasonable habit
of mind had made him, finding extraordinary rest in thought of Nona,
accuse himself for finding none in thought of Mabel. She was his wife;
he never could get away from the poignancy of that phrase. His wife--his
responsibility towards her--the old thought, eight years old, of all she
had given up in exchanging her own life for his life--and what was she
getting? He set himself, on their reunion, always to remember the
advantage he had over her: that he _could_ reason out her attitude
towards things; that she could not,--neither his attitude nor, what was
more, her own.

Now. What was this leading up to? "She did it bringing in your bicycle."
Puzzling sometimes over passages with Mabel that with mysterious and
surprising suddenness had plunged into scenes, he had whimsically
envisaged how he had been, as it were, led blindfolded to the edge of a
precipice, and then, _whizz!_ sent flying over on to the angry crags
below.

Bantering protest sometimes averted the disaster. "Well, come now,
Mabel, that's not my fault. That was your idea, making Low Jinks come
out and meet me every evening as if t