the evening of the dog-bite. On that evening
Nellie had suddenly transformed herself into a distressingly perfect
angel, and not once had she descended from her high estate. At least
daily she had kissed him--what kisses! Kisses that were not kisses!
Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale! He could have killed
her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous wifely
behaviour; she would have died victorious.

So that his freakish excursion was not starting very auspiciously.
And, waiting with her for the train on the platform at Knype, he felt
this more and more. His old clerk, Penkethman, was there to receive
certain final instructions on Thrift Club matters, and the sweetness
of Nellie's attitude towards the ancient man, and the ancient man's
naive pleasure therein, positively maddened Edward Henry. To such an
extent that he began to think: "Is she going to spoil my trip for me?"

Then Brindley came up. Brindley, too, was going to London. And
Nellie's saccharine assurances to Brindley that Edward Henry really
needed a change just about completed Edward Henry's desperation. Not
even the uproarious advent of two jolly wholesale grocers, Messieurs
Garvin & Quorrall, also going to London, could effectually lighten his
pessimism.

When the train steamed in, Edward Henry, in fear, postponed the
ultimate kiss as long as possible. He allowed Brindley to climb
before him into the second-class compartment, and purposely tarried
in finding change for the porter; and then he turned to Nellie and
stooped. She raised her white veil and raised the angelic face. They
kissed--the same false kiss--and she was withdrawing her lips ... But
suddenly she put them again to his for one second, with a hysterical,
clinging pressure. It was nothing. Nobody could have noticed it.
She herself pretended that she had not done it. Edward Henry had
to pretend not to notice it. But to him it was everything. She had
relented. She had surrendered. The sign had come from her. She wished
him to enjoy his visit to London.

He said to himself:

"Dashed if I don't write to her every day!"

He leaned out of the window as the train rolled away and waved and
smiled to her, not concealing his sentiments now; nor did she conceal
hers as she replied with exquisite pantomime to his signals. But if
the train had not been rapidly and infallibly separating them the
reconciliation could scarcely have been thus open. If for some reason
the tra