He found her thus occupied one evening when he had come home after seeing Jane. After seeing Jane he was always rather more aware of his wife's existence than he had been, so that he was struck now by the strange dejection of her figure. He came to her and stood, leaning against the chimney-piece and looking down at her, as he had stood once and looked down at Jane. "What is it?" he said. "It's nothing. I've a cold in me head." "Cold in your head! You've been crying. There's a blob on your dress." (He kissed her.) "What are you crying about?" "I'm not cryin' about _anything_." "But--you're crying." It gave him pain to see Rose crying. "If I am it's the first time I've done it." "Are you quite sure?" "Certain. I never _was_ one for cryin', nor for bein' seen cry. It's just--it's just sittin' here with me 'ands before me, havin' nothing to do." "I suppose there isn't very much for you to do." "I've done all there is and a great deal there isn't." "I say, shall we go to the play to-night?" She smiled with pleasure at his thought for her. Then she shook her head. "It's not plays I want--it's work. I'd like to have me hands full. If we had a little house----" "Oh no. No--no--no." He looked terrified. "It would come a lot cheaper. Only a _little_ house, where I could do all the work." "I've told you before I won't let you." "With a girl," she pleaded, "to scrub. A little house up Hampstead way." "I don't want to live up Hampstead way." "If you mean Uncle and Aunt," she said, "they wouldn't think of intrudin'. We settled that, me and Uncle. I'd be as happy as the day is long." "You're _not_? And the day is very long, is it?" He kissed her, first on her mouth and then on the lobe of the ear that was next to him. "Kissin' 's all very well," said Rose. "You never kissed me at Hampstead, and you don't know how happy I was there. Doin' things for you." "I don't want things done for me." "No. I wish you did." "And, Rose, I don't want to be bothered with a house; to be tied to a house; to have anything to do with a house." "Would it worry you?" "Abominably. And think of the horrors of moving!" "I'd move you," said Rose. "I couldn't. Look here. It would kill that book. I must have peace. This is a beastly hole, I know, but there's peace in it. You don't know what that damned book _is_." She gave up the idea of a house; and seven months after her marriage, she fell into a melancholy. Sometimes, now, on a fine afternoon, she would go out into the streets and look listlessly through shop-windows at hats and gowns and all the pretty things she would have thought it sin so much as to desire to wear. Where Rose lingered longest was outside those heavenly places where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things of desire, things of impossible dream, to be approached with a sacred dumbness of the heart.