Incontestably
comic. Stupid, of course, but just the kind of stupid thing that tickled
him irresistibly. And she couldn't see it. Absolutely could not see it.
But if she were never going to see any of these stupid little things
that appealed to him--? And then he wrinkled his brows. "You remember
how he used to wrinkle up his old nut," as the garrulous Hapgood had
said.

A night-light, her wish, dimly illumined the room. He raised himself and
looked at her fondly, sleeping beside him. He thought, "Dash it, the
thing's been just the same from her point of view. That den business.
She likes den, and I can't stick den. Just the same for her as for me
that High Jinks and Low Jinks tickles me and doesn't tickle her."

He very gently moved with his finger a tress of her hair that had fallen
upon her face.... Mabel!... His wife!... How gently beneath her filmy
bedgown her bosom rose and fell!... How utterly calm her face was. How
at peace, how secure, she lay there. He thought, "Three weeks ago she
was sleeping in the terrific privacy of her own room, and here she is
come to me in mine. Cut off from everything and everybody and come here
to me."

An inexpressible tenderness filled him. He had a sudden sense of the
poignant and tremendous adventure on which they were embarked together.
They had been two lives, and now they were one life, altering completely
the lives they would have led singly: a new sea, a new ship on a new,
strange sea. What lay before them?

She stirred.

His thoughts continued: One life! One life out of two lives; one nature
out of two natures! Mysterious and extraordinary metamorphosis. She had
brought her nature to his, and he his nature to hers, and they were to
mingle and become one nature.... Absurdly and inappropriately his mind
picked up and presented to him the grotesque words, "High Jinks and Low
Jinks." A note of laughter was irresistibly tickled out of him.

She said very sleepily, "Mark, are you laughing? What are you laughing
at?"

He patted her shoulder. "Oh, nothing."

One nature?

CHAPTER III

I

One nature? In the fifth year of their married life thoughts of her and
of the poignant and tremendous adventure on which they were embarked
together were no longer possible while she lay in bed beside him. They
had come to occupy separate rooms.

In the fifth year of their married life measles visited Penny Green.
Mabel caught it. Their bedroom was naturally the sick room. S