Also Christmas was approaching and the nervous effort to banish all thought of the holiday from his mind was wearing. With problems all day and little relaxation anywhere, Dick was beginning to show baggy pouches under his eyes and little lines trailed down from the corners of his mouth. In his office that afternoon he was so exacting that his exasperated stenographer, escaping finally from his criticism, told her friend in the next office that she “didn’t wonder Mr. Harrison’s wife wouldn’t live with him. He’s got a terrible temper--fierce.” Poor Dick, when the office was empty and he had to leave it, strolling back to the club to a choice of chicken casserole or English muttonchop, without enthusiasm, trying not to notice that the shop windows were hung with tinsel and gaudy with that gaudiness which is so beautiful at Christmas time, swinging past the toyshops with carelessness, and then turning back to look into the window of one of them. * * * * * Then came the day before the holiday with one of those fine pictorial snowstorms to make it all the more festive, with the unavoidable truce with work and struggle which pervaded even the world of business, with the greeting on every one’s lips. It seemed to Dick that he could not turn around without stirring up some memory of his home. He could see it so clearly, decorated for Christmas with a green English holly wreath below the brass knocker on the white door, poinsettias in the hall, the tree in its corner of the long living-room and the fire blazing; Dorothea’s little mind aflame like her cheeks with excitement; Leslie walking stumblingly among his presents; the baby walking now, too, probably. He would catch himself wondering what new words Leslie had learned. He wondered if Cecily would have a Christmas celebration this year. Yes, she would. It was like her to uphold things for the children even if her own fun were shattered. But she must be short of money. At that thought the glimmer of tenderness in his heart went out. It was bad enough not to see the children, but not to be allowed to support them! To be treated as a criminal outcast! Well, he’d left of his own free will, he reminded himself, and went on to the embittering thought that he’d tried to solve things without a break. They couldn’t have gone on--silent evenings, the constant sense that he wasn’t pleasing his wife, that she felt he was deteriorating, the slight that her rigorous standards, single track virtues put upon him. He wasn’t happy; she wasn’t happy. It couldn’t go on. Matthew had said it couldn’t go on as it was. Probably not. Probably end in a divorce. That would be a nasty business; no worse than lots of other people went through, but Cecily would hate it. Poor Cecily! And in its endless track his mind pondered again whose was the fault and where the remedy.