But he did not go down to the country. More than ever he felt that to rejoin his wife with his guilt unacknowledged would be a greater trial than he could endure. She was so innocent. If she had been a different kind of woman, his reluctance would have been duller and easier to overcome; but to have been false to Cynthia made him feel as if he had robbed a blind girl. That he could not delay rejoining her much longer he was distressfully aware. It was ten months since she had gone away, and even if the people in Streatham wished to retain the house for a third half-year, as he understood was likely--their return to New York, or wherever they had come from, being indefinitely postponed--that would be no reason why he and Cynthia should not live together at Monmouth or somewhere else. He had written her that Messrs. Kynaston had taken _The Eye of the Beholder_, and during the next day or two he was in hourly expectation of her reply. On the third afternoon after he had posted his letter, the door opened and she came into the room. He had not heard the bell ring, and at the sound of her footstep he turned quickly--and then, almost before he realised it, his wife was in his arms, laughing and half crying, saying how glad she was to see him, how delighted she was at the book's acceptance. "I had to come," she exclaimed--"I had to! Oh, darling! you don't mind because the money isn't much? Think what Kynaston said of it! And for your next you'll get proper terms.... Well, are you surprised to see me? Let me look at you. You're different. What have you been doing to yourself? And Baby--you wouldn't know Baby. He talks!... I've been praying you'd be at home. I wouldn't let them show me in; I've been picturing walking in on you all the way in the train.... Sweetheart!" She squeezed him to her again, and then held him at arm's length, regarding him gaily. "You've changed," she repeated; "you look more serious. And I? Am I all right--am I a disappointment?" "You're beautiful," said Kent slowly. "You have changed, too." He gazed at her with a curious sense of unfamiliarity, striving to define to himself the alteration that puzzled him. Her face had gained something besides the hues of health. It seemed to him that her eyes were deeper, that her smile was more complex. Vaguely he felt that he had thought of her as a girl and was beholding a woman--that he had insulted a woman who was lovelier than any he had known. "Aren't you going to invite me to take off my things? May I?" "Do," he said, with the same sense of strangeness. "Can I help you?" He took them from her, awkwardly, and put her into a comfortable chair, and made up the fire. "It's a new hat, it suits you! I always liked you in a little hat. Did you I get it down there?" "I trimmed it myself," she said. "Mind the pin!" "You shall have some tea--or would you rather have dinner? You must be hungry!" "Tea, please, and cake. Can you produce cake?"