But Harriet was becoming discontented. They had been in their house only six weeks: and she had had enough of it. Yet it was paid for for three months: at four guineas a week. And they were pretty short of money, and would be for the rest of the year. He had already overdrawn. Yet she began to suggest going away: away from Sydney. She felt humiliated in that beastly little Murdoch Street. “What did I tell you?” he retorted. “The very look of it humiliated me. Yet you wanted it, and you said you liked it.” “I did like it--for the fun of it. But now there’s all this intimacy and neighbouring. I just can’t stand it. I just can’t.” “But you began it.” “No, I didn’t; you began it. And your beastly sweetness and gentleness with such people. I wish you kept a bit of it for me.” He went away in silence, knowing the uselessness of argument. And to tell the truth he was feeling also a revulsion from all this neighbouring, as Harriet called it, and all this talk. It was usually the same. He started by holding himself aloof, then gradually he let himself get mixed in, and then he had revulsions. And to-day was one of his revulsions. Coming home from Mosman’s Bay, he had felt himself dwindle to a cipher in Jack’s consciousness. Then, last evening, there had been all this fervour and protestation. And this morning all the cross-examination by Trewhella. And he, Somers, had plainly said all he thought. And now, as he walked home with Jack, Jack had no more use for him than for the stump of cigar which he chewed between his lips merely because he forgot to spit it away. Which state of affairs did not go at all well with _our_ friend’s sense of self-importance. Therefore, when he got home, his eyes opened once more to the delicacy of Harriet’s real beauty, which he knew as none else knew it, after twelve years of marriage. And once more he realised her gay, undying courage, her wonderful fresh zest in front of life. And all these other little people seemed so common in comparison, so common. He stood still with astonishment, wondering how he could have come to betray the essential reality of his life and Harriet’s to the common use of these other people with their watchful, vulgar wills. That scene of last evening: what right had a fellow like Callcott to be saying these things to him? What right had he to put his arm round his, Richard’s shoulder, and give him a tight hug? Somers winced to think of it. And now Callcott had gone off with his Victoria in Sunday clothes to some other outing. Anything was as good as anything else; why not!