She went downstairs, through the beautiful rooms which she had planned so carefully and which meant so much to her, her head hanging a little as if she had been a rebuffed child. The front door was open, blown open by a gust of wind after her careless closing. Moved by some impulse, she went out on the veranda. The street was quiet. It was a street of affluence, the entrance and door lights on the houses glowing softly, the red lights of motors quietly signaling through the snow. Wealth, luxury, comfort. Perhaps Fliss knew dimly that her only step towards acquiring the strength which might win Matthew’s complete respect was to go away from him now, now that their bargain was broken and she loved him as he did not love her. She might go away. Glancing up and down the street, she shuddered a little. Then went in, and closing the door, carefully this time, proceeded to the kitchen and set about finding the most delicious possible supper for Matthew. CHAPTER XIX There were many times when Cecily felt the absurdity of allowing her life to be affected by her domestic machinery and the servants who operated it. It wasn’t, she felt, dignified. She somehow could not find a place in her philosophy of marriage for the cooks, the housemaids and the nurses. They had to be if she wanted to escape the physical work in a house spacious enough for her needs, but to have to regulate her life by them bothered her. The cheap comedy of the whole servant problem affronted her and to have to play a rôle in it herself was increasingly irritating. Her mother helped her as much as she could by sending her servants, but the presence of three babies was anathema to most of them and they would stay a little while and drift off to a place with “two in the family and the highest wages.” And now her mother had gone to California to avoid the wintry spring of Carrington. Della and Walter were keeping that house open, and coöperation was not in Delia’s line. It did not occur to her to help Cecily out by lending her servants, as Mrs. Warner had sometimes done. Cecily paid high wages, higher and higher, utterly disproportionate to the service she was getting, but money of course inspired no loyalty. There were quarrels in the kitchen between the maids--unpleasant hiatuses when Cecily washed her own Wedgwood china and beautiful hand-made silver dishes. It was all very absurd, but there it was; because there was an actual undersupply of servants in Carrington and because so many women wanted servants and were unable or unwilling to get their own meals and make their own beds at any price, there was a situation which actually affected many a woman’s health and had its influence on married happiness and undoubtedly on the birth rate. What began as a joke had been treated as a joke too long, long after it had become a really sinister influence.