-fashioned house on the
farther fringe of Clapham Common. The house was surrounded by trees, and
had a pretty lawn, not as well kept as it might be, for Captain Sarrasin
and his wife were wanderers, and did not often make any long stay at
their home in the southern suburbs of London. There were many Scotch
firs among the trees on the lawn, and there was a tiny pool within the
grounds which had a tinier islet on its surface, and on the tiny islet a
Scotch fir stood all alone. The place had been left to Mrs. Sarrasin
years and years ago, and it suited her and her husband very well. It
kept them completely out of the way of callers and of a society for
which they had neither of them any manner of inclination. Mrs. Sarrasin
never remained actually in town while she was in London--indeed, she
seldom went into London, and when she did she always, however late the
hour, returned to her Clapham house. Sarrasin often had occasion to stay
in town all night, but whenever he could get away in time he was fond of
tramping the whole distance--say, from Paulo's Hotel to the farther side
of Clapham Common. He loved a night walk, he said.

Business and work apart, he and his wife were company for each other.
They had no children. One little girl had just been shown to the light
of day--it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up
eyes doomed never to open--and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They
never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the
effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each
secretly grumbles at the other--or if one only repines, that comes to
much the same thing in the end--or else they are both drawn together
with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife
would have given to the child is now concentrated on the husband, and
all the love the husband would have given to the infant is stored up for
the wife. A first cause of difference, or of coldness, or of growing
indifference between a married pair is often on the birth of the first
child. If the woman is endowed with intense maternal instinct she
becomes all but absorbed in the child, and the husband, kept at a little
distance, feels, rightly or wrongly, that he is not as much to her as he
was before. Before, she was his companion; now she has got someone else
to look after and to care about. It is a crisis which sensible and
loving people soon get over--but all people cannot