At this moment he was alone in the house. Mrs. Home was spending a few days in London, Philip would soon be due by the evening train, and Madge was out, doing some small businesses in Pangbourne. She had been unwilling to leave him, but he had made it unmistakably and ill-temperedly clear he would sooner be left. He thought with a dull wonder at himself of the fact that he could have been cross with her. It had happened often before, and in spite of its recurrence he never got used to it. It always seemed strange to him. And with a wonder that was almost incredulous, he thought how he had behaved to her to-day. For she had come to him with a word which a man can only hear once, to whisper which a woman nestles close to him, pouring out her very soul in the joy of knowing that she will some day put into his arms her first-born child. That Madge had told him, but he felt nothing; it did not reach him, neither joy for her nor for himself seemed any longer capable of being felt, and he had said only, "I shall never see it." He was thinking about that now, if this leaden contemplation of facts could be called thought, of that and of the child that had cried when it saw his face. Over that face he passed his sensitive fingers. "I'm sure I don't wonder," he said to himself. * * * * * The door opened once as he lay in this window-seat, and correctly and mechanically he pictured what was going on. Only one person entered; that he could tell by the footfalls, and that one person whistled gently to himself. He paused by the table, then went to the door again, and again re-entered and paused by another. Then he poked the fire and swept up the grate. Clearly the footman making the room ready, and he banged the door as he went out. Now if that child had cried at the sight of his face, what must it be to others? Surely they would cry too if they obeyed their natural impulse, either cry or turn away, in pity, no doubt, but also in repulsion. It must be an effort to everybody to look at him, to be with him. And Madge was with him so much; she kissed him, she let him kiss her; she was his wife, the wife of this man with the nightmare face at which a child cried out as if it saw bogey. Philip had been quick and ready on that occasion, had said the child was teething, and wrung corroboration from the father. But he had answered, "Yes, it teethes when it sees me," and Philip was not ready enough for that. The crying child explained other things too; for Mrs. Home had cried when she saw him; he could hear from her voice that she was crying, there were sobs in it. He had thought then that it was from pity merely and sympathy, but he told himself now that it was not so; she cried from horror at him. All his life he had hated ugly things, and now it would be hard to match himself in that abhorred category. * * * * *