Poor Patricia! she had looked forward so rapturously to having him at Sunflowers; worked so hard to make the place perfect. And now it seemed to her as though not only house and children but she herself must be distasteful to him; as though even palship were ended. Night after night, his placid kisses banished her to loneliness. Night after wakeful night, she watched the light in his dressing-room glimmer through the chinks of the door between them. Poor Patricia! unable to realize that this man who annoyed her by the very placidity of his demeanour, was struggling—every minute of the day, and every hour of the night—to prevent his hands from trembling, his voice from quivering, his every tone and every attitude from betraying the terrors which were eating away his self-respect. Poor Peter! he strove so desperately to conceal his miseries. Poor Peter, who only succeeded, by not voicing them, in finally convincing his wife that the something he strove so obviously to conceal from her must be lack of affection. . . . Thus brick by reticent brick: he with his nameless shameless fears, she with her certainty of love lost for ever: these two built up their pathetic wall of misunderstandings. In all their lives they had never had so many opportunities for companionship: in all their lives they had never been so uncompanionable. They were always together—but they were never in harmony. Mutual existence turned to a game of finesse—“I mustn’t let her know this,” “I mustn’t let him see that.” Yet, outwardly, they remained a very ordinary married couple. No visiting stranger, not even Francis whom they saw almost daily, perceived the barrier between them. Walking together, talking together, in the dining-room with the children, in the garden with Fry, morning and evening, the game of misunderstanding went on. And the man used to say to himself: “O God, am I going mad? I am afraid, afraid. Everything frightens me. One day she will know I am afraid. Then, she will despise me. The servants know I am afraid: they talk about me: I cannot hear what they say, but I know they are talking about me, they talk about me all the time. The children know I am afraid. . . . O God, what am I afraid of? Of what am I not afraid? I wish to God I could go back to the front. Death is simpler out there. And I am only fit for death, because I am afraid to go back to the front. . . . She mustn’t know that I am afraid, she must never guess that I am afraid.” And the woman used to say to herself: “O God, what is behind Peter’s eyes? He hates it all—me, the children, this house I have made for him. His voice praises, but his heart condemns me. O God, if he’d only say what he is thinking. We used to be pals once—and that was not enough for me. I used to call myself his chattel. Now, I am not even chattel to him. We are strangers in a strange house. He hates me. He mustn’t guess that I know of his hatred.”