"There in the other place--I strangled it, poor thing, in the dark. If you'll go out and see, there must be blood. Which, indeed," he added, "on an altar of sacrifice, is all right. But the place is for ever spattered." "I don't want to go out and see." She locked her hands over the needlework folded on her knee, and he knew, with her eyes on him, that a look he had seen before was in her face. "You're off your head, you know, my dear, in a way." Then, however, more cheeringly: "It's a good job it hasn't been too late." "Too late to get it under?" "Too late for Them to give you the second chance that I thank God you accept." "Yes, if it _had_ been----!" And he looked away as through the ruddy curtain and into the chill street. Then he faced her again. "I've scarcely got over my fright yet. I mean," he went on, "for you." "And I mean for _you_. Suppose what you had come to announce to me now were that we had _got_ the sack. How should I enjoy, do you think, seeing you turn out? Yes, out _there_!" she added as his eyes again moved from their little warm circle to the night of early winter on the other side of the pane, to the rare quick footsteps, to the closed doors, to the curtains drawn like their own, behind which the small flat town, intrinsically dull, was sitting down to supper. He stiffened himself as he warmed his back; he held up his head, shaking himself a little as if to shake the stoop out of his shoulders, but he had to allow she was right. "What would have become of us?" "What indeed? We should have begged our bread--or I should be taking in washing." He was silent a little. "I'm too old. I should have begun sooner." "Oh God forbid!" she cried. "The pinch," he pursued, "is that I can do nothing else." "Nothing whatever!" she agreed with elation. "Whereas here--if I cultivate it--I perhaps _can_ still lie. But I must cultivate it." "Oh you old dear!" And she got up to kiss him. "I'll do my best," he said. VII