ant"--she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high
petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note--"I don't want a
piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can
call my own."

"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and
every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors
and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for
myself."

She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating
impression of his folly.

"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?"

She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its
place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was
delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be
able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and
waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he
laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as
perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.

When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the
windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with
his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the
perspiration from his forehead.

"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a
chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where
it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit
better pleased with it to-morrow."

He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you
don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?"

"The trouble?"

"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see
it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not
satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort
of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?"

She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I."

"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let
me think now--well--of course I know perfectly well that it's not a
piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do.
We want the same thing, sweetheart."

She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't
want the same thing, and never did."

"I don't und