"Oh! only goin’ to help overhaul my Service kit and so on," Franky responded lightly. "What with gettin’ leave and bein’ married I’ve hardly sported kharks since last Autumn Slogs. Wouldn’t do to find myself too potty to get into the regulation tea-leaves in case my country called." "What rot! ..." But Franky had swung out of the room and clattered upstairs with Fits close upon his heels. Fits, who, ordinarily unwilling to be out of sight and sound of her master, now adhered to him like a leech, or his shadow; whining and fidgeting in his absence, as though her feminine mind were beset by haunting apprehensions of some sudden parting, or impending loss.... Long afterwards Margot wondered: "If I had loved him as Fits loves him—should I not also have felt that foreshadowing dread?" But she was conscious only of her own physical discomfort and the increasing weariness that movement brought her. Sharp discontent peaked and pinched the tiny features. She caught a reflection of them in a screen-mirror and shuddered. With every day that dawned now, their wild-rose prettiness faded. By-and-by— "If I were as good to look at as I used to be in June—or even a month ago!" she wondered—"would _he_ leave me as he is leaving me to-night—to go down to the House? Don’t I know that the House means the Club, or the music-hall, or a card-party! Why do men get the best of everything and never have to pay the bill?" She dined in a tea-gown, and when Franky, still in that strange mood of suppressed excitement, attired to four pins in the magpie evening garb of civilized life, had kissed her and said: "So-long, Kittums, little woman! I’m going down to the Big Talk Shop for a bit. Expect me back on the doormat when the Mouthpieces of the Nation have done swoppin’ hot air!" she tucked up her feet on the big sofa in her charming drawing-room and read "WEEP NO MORE, MOTHERS," until the pink pamphlet with the gilt sunrise stamped upon it grew heavy in the tiny hand. Then she rang for Pauline and betook herself to bed. The bedroom was blue-green as a starling’s egg, its painted walls adorned with delicate lines of black and silver. Perhaps you can see Kittums, under her Brittany lace coverlet amongst the big frilled pillows in one of the narrow black oak bedsteads standing side by side on a carpet of deep rose. A silver night-lamp burned under a dome of sapphire glass on her night-table, and an electric clock noiselessly marked the hours. Lying thus, wrapped about with all the swaddlings of Civilisation, this dainty daughter of the Twentieth Century strove in blind revolt against Nature, the huge relentless Force that was slowly grinding her down. The ant that gets fed into the mill-hopper with the grain might resent the millstone after the same fashion. Ridiculous, but infinitely pathetic, the tragedy of an infinitesimal thing.