Then she crossed over to his chair and suddenly put her arm around his neck. Her voice lowered. “I’ve fallen in love with you while we’ve been down here, for the first time since we’ve been married. I don’t know why, quite. It started with your being so beastly and keeping it up. You always used to give way before whenever I said anything to you, but you’ve kept your end up like anything since you’ve been here. And then it was the people liking you better than they liked me. And then it was Mrs. Lester, my being jealous of her. And it was even more than those things—something in the air. I don’t know, but I’m seeing things differently. I’ve been a poor sort of wife most of the time, I expect; I didn’t see it before, but I’m going to be different. I could kiss your Mrs. Lester, although I do hate her.” Then when he kissed her she thought how big he was. She hadn’t sat with her arms round him and his great muscles round her since the honeymoon, and even then she had been thinking about her trousseau. And breakfast was quite an extraordinary meal. The girls were amazed. They had never seen their father in this kind of mood before. They had always rather cautiously disliked him, as far as they’d had any feeling for him at all, but their attitude had in the main been negative. But now, here he was joking, telling funny stories, and mother laughing. Cutting the tops off their eggs too, and paying them quite a lot of attention. He found the meal delightful, too, although he realised that there was still a good deal of the old Mrs. Maradick left. Her voice was as shrill as ever; she was just as cross with Annie for spreading her butter with an eye to self-indulgence rather than economy. She was still as crude and vulgar in her opinion of things and people. But he didn’t see it any longer in the same way. The knowledge that there was really the other Mrs. Maradick there all the time waiting for him to develop, encourage her, made the things that had grated on him at one time so harshly now a matter of very small moment. He was even tender about them. It was a good thing that they’d both got their faults, a very fortunate thing. “Now, Annie, there you go, slopping your tea into your saucer like that, and now it’ll drop all over your dress. Why _can’t_ you be more careful?” “Yes, but mother, it was so full.” “I say,” this from Maradick, “what do you think of our all having this afternoon down on the beach or somewhere? Tea and things; just ourselves. After all, it’s our last day, and it’s quite fine and warm. No more rain.” Everyone thought it splendid. Annie, under this glorious new state of things, even found time and courage to show her father her last French exercise with only three mistakes. The scene was domestic for the next half-hour. Then he left them. He wanted to go and make his farewell to the place; this would be the last opportunity that he would have.