He held her close to his side, while he showed her what he had chosen; the pale-pink collars--"You were always gone on pink, weren't you?" he asked--the silk stockings and the vanity garters. With clumsy fingers he tried to adjust the hair-band. "Let me do it," she protested, "if you really want me to wear it." "Well, don't _you_ want to?" he asked, a little hurt. "I'd love to, if I may put it on properly. It's sweet." "It makes you look awf'ly French!" "Does that improve me?" "You don't want improving." He sat down by the dressing-table, while she stood, fixing the glittering circle round her hair with clever fingers. He kept his hand on her waist and, leaning forward, looked at her in the glass. She had a lithe naturalness, a slim strength, which newly arrested his admiration. Struck by the charm of his own wife, he missed no detail of her appearance. She had dressed to please herself with a true woman's delight in _dessous_; and he was quick to notice the mauve gleam of ribbon shoulder straps under the filmy black of her bodice, which gave the sombre gown a charming colour-note; her sleeves, transparent, long, and braceleted round the wrists with black velvet bands, showed the whole length of her white arms; in her ears amethyst earrings repeated the note of the mauve ribbons. Her stockings were silk and her slippers of velvet. She was as amazing to him as a beautiful stranger. "It doesn't go with my earrings," she said carelessly when she had fixed the band, "but it's so pretty, and thank you ever so much." She turned and showed him; and she showed him, too, the interest she took in herself, which had caused her to pull out those waves of fluffy hair over the tops of her ears, from under the hair-band, and the curls she had pulled from beneath to dance on her forehead. "Give me a kiss for it," he said, drawing her down. She kissed him lightly. "Fancy you the mother of a family!" he remarked, with a look at the screened corner. She smiled to herself, and began fingering the other things. "How nice they are! And silk stockings! They're always welcome." "But you're wearing them already," he said, with rather a disappointed glance at her ankles. "That doesn't matter. If there's one thing you can't glut a woman with, it's silk stockings." "Thanks, Mrs. Kerr! I'll remember that when I come home in the small hours and have to provide a peace offering." "Come home any time you like," she said goodhumouredly, "there will always be peace as far as I am concerned." When he had entered the room, he had missed something in it; and now it occurred to him what it was. "Where's my bed?" he demanded. "In the dressing-room. I had it moved there, when you went; I thought I might as well give myself more space." "Of course! I noticed something unusual about the dressing-room. You waited for me to move it back here, I suppose? It's rather a tough job for women." "The hall-porter would have done it, you know."