Broken sentences came from her: "What did you--? Who--? You shouldn't have done that. You frightened me." Her voice was sharply angry, and in all their long married life together he had never before felt her so completely a stranger; he felt as though he had accosted some unknown woman in the street and been attacked by her for his familiarity. He took refuge, as he always did when he was confused, in pomposity. "Really, my dear, you'd think I was a burglar. Hum--yes. You shouldn't be so easily startled." She was still staring at him as though even now she did not realise his identity. Her hands were clenched and her breath came in little hurried gasps as though she had been running. "No--you shouldn't...silly...coming across the room like that." "Very well, very well," he answered testily. "Why isn't dinner ready? It's ten minutes past the time." She moved across the room, not answering him. Suddenly his pomposity was gone. He moved over to her, standing before her like an overgrown schoolboy, looking at her and smiling uneasily. "The truth is, my dear," he said, "that I can't conceive my entering a room without everybody hearing it. No, I can't indeed," he laughed boisterously. "You tell anybody that I crossed a room without your hearing it, and they won't believe you. No, they wont." He bent down and kissed her. His touch tickled her cheek, but she made no movement. He felt, as his hand rested on her shoulder, that she was still trembling. "Your nerves must be in a bad way," he said. "Why, you're trembling still! Why don't you see Puddifoot?" "No--no," she answered hurriedly. "It was silly of me----" Making a great effort, she smiled up at him. "Well, how's everything going?" "Going?" "Yes, for the great day. Is everything settled?" He began to tell her in the old familiar, so boring way, every detail of the events of the last few hours. "I was just by Sharps' when I remembered that I'd said nothing to Nixon about those extra seats at the back off the nave, so I had to go all the way round----" Joan came in. His especial need of some one that night, rejected as it had been at once by his wife, turned to his daughter. How pretty she was, he thought, as she came across the room sunlit with the deep evening gold that struck in long paths of light into the darkest shadows and corners. That moment seemed suddenly the culmination of the advance that they had been making towards one another during the last six months. When she came close to him, he, usually so unobservant, noticed that she, too, was in distress.