His wife looked at him, astonished. He could see that she was grieved--or rather, aggrieved--at his glimmer of anarchy. "Of course," she explained at last. "People can't have what they like. There's one's duty to do. Life isn't for enjoyment, Charlie. It's given to us ... it is given to us...." As she paused to crystallise an idea, Charlie cut in. "Yes," he said, "it is given to us.... What for?" He leaned his head on his hand. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the cloth, weaving patterns upon it. And with this question something of boyhood came upon him again, and he weaved visions upon the cloth. "To do one's duty in," she replied gently, but rebukingly. Charlie did not know the classic phrase, "Cui bono." He merely repeated: "What for?" After supper he helped her to wash up, for the daily help left early in the afternoon; and then he asked her, idle as he knew the question to be, if she would like to come for a walk--just a short walk up the road. She shook her head. "I ought not to leave the children." "They're in bed," he argued, "and Maud's big enough to look after the others for half-an-hour. Maud's twelve." She shook her head. "I ought not to leave the house." "But," he began slowly. "I am not the kind of woman who leaves her house and children in the evenings," she said gently, but finally. Charlie took his hat. He turned it round and round in his hands, pinching the crown in, and punching it out. He had a curious, almost uncontrollable wish to cry. For a moment it was terrible. Before it was over, she was speaking again. "You ought not to mess your hats about like that; they don't last half as long." Charlie went out. He knew other men who were as puzzled about life as himself, but mostly they were of cruder stuff, and if things at home went beyond their bearing they flung out of their houses, swearing, and went to play a hundred up at the local club. Then they were philosophers again. But for Charlie this evening there was no philosophy big enough, for he was looking, though he did not know it, over the edge of that awful, but enchanting abyss. Its depths were obscured by rolling clouds of mist, and it was only this mist which he now saw, terrifying and confusing him. He was a little man, and knew it. He was a poor man, and knew it. He was a weary man, and knew it. He hated his wife, and knew it. He hated his children--whom she had made like herself, prim, peeking and childishly censorious--and knew it. He had not meant it to be like this at all. When he got married she was the starched daughter of starched parents from a starched small house--like the one he came from--but she was young, and her figure was pliant, and her hair curled rather sweetly.