tock-still in the center of the nursery, wondering whether, at such a
time, I ought to go to my husband or keep away from him.

I decided, after a minute or two of thought, to bide a wee. So I
slipped quietly down-stairs and stowed Dinkie's overturned kiddie-car
away in the cloak-room and warned Iroquois Annie--the meekest-looking
Redskin ever togged out in the cap and apron of domestic servitude--not
to burn my fricassee of frozen prairie-chicken and not to scorch the
scones so beloved by my Scotch-Canadian lord and master. Then I
inspected the supper table and lighted the lamp with the Ruskin-green
shade and supplanted Dinky-Dunk's napkin that had a coffee-stain along
its edge with a fresh one from the linen-drawer. Then, after airing the
house to rid it of the fumes from Iroquois Annie's intemperate griddle
and carrying Dinkie's muddied overshoes back to the kitchen and
lighting the Chinese hall-lamp, I went to the bottom of the stairs to
call my husband down to supper.

But still again that wordless feeling of something amiss prompted me
to hesitate. So instead of calling blithely out of him, as I had
intended, I went silently up the stairs. Then I slipped along the hall
and just as silently opened his study door.

My husband was sitting at his desk, confronted by a litter of papers
and letters, which I knew to be the mail he had just brought home and
flung there. But he wasn't looking at anything on his desk. He was
merely sitting there staring vacantly out of the window at the paling
light. His elbows were on the arms of his Bank of England swivel-chair
for which I'd made the green baize seat-pad, and as I stared in at
him, half in shadow, I had an odd impression of history repeating
itself. This puzzled me, for a moment, until I remembered having
caught sight of him in much the same attitude, only a few days before.
But this time he looked so tired and drawn and spineless that a
fish-hook of sudden pity tugged at my throat. For my Dinky-Dunk sat
there without moving, with the hope and the joy of life drawn utterly
out of his bony big body. The heavy emptiness of his face, as rugged
as a relief-map in the side-light, even made me forget the smell of
the scones Iroquois Annie was vindictively scorching down in the
kitchen. He didn't know, of course, that I was watching him, for he
jumped as I signaled my presence by slamming the door after stepping
in through it. That jump, I knew, wasn't altogether due to edgy