He restores the receiver to its place. She is not there. She is a light sleeper; she would have been sure to wake. Comes to him the memory of an evening fourteen months ago, the evening of his big speech in the House on Ireland. He had returned, eager and elated, and he had felt that he must tell her of his triumph. A sleepy voice had answered him, a voice that had instantly lost its sleepiness when it had realised who was speaking. “Oh, you, darling,” she had said. “Yes, what is it?” And she had listened intently to his account of the night’s debate. “But I’m a selfish pig,” he had said, “waking you up like this.” And in his whole life he had never known anything more intense than the thrill with which he had heard her quick, breathless answer. “But, my darling, you know, surely, I want you to, always, always. It’s the next best thing to seeing you.” Those were the days when she had been never too busy, too late, too pre-occupied to talk to him, or see him. He had often come to the flat after a long, night’s sitting, and she had rekindled the fire for him, and had sat before it leaning back against his knees. That had passed, of course, inevitably, in the nature of things. But something surely should have come to take its place. Surely they should have built for themselves some abiding mansion. Had they squandered their capital? Was there nothing left for them? Backwards and forwards he paces up and down his study. She is not home yet, and he knows that till she is home, sleep is impossible for him. He would lie tossing in bed at the mercy of his fevered fancy. He must know one way or another. It is a quarter of an hour since he rang up. She is back by now perhaps. Again he raises the receiver. Again he calls her number. Again there is the long delay. Again the sleepy, “Sorry, I can get no answer, sir.” This time he does not rise from the chair. He takes the watch from his pocket and leans it in front of him against the pedestal of the telephone. “Every ten minutes,” he says, “I will ring her up. I will know the exact minute at which she returns. I will see that she does not lie to me. I shall know whether she is telling me the truth or not.” And every ten minutes from half past one to two, and from two to three, he raises the receiver and calls in the same steady voice, “Hammerton 5769.” And every time there is the same delay and then the same answer. He does not move from the chair. The fire has become a dull glow among charred ashes; the room is cold. But he sits there, his eyes fixed on the second hand of his watch as it eats into the minutes.