He was happy, for the woman he loved received him with a tranquil smile when he went home to his dinner, and was content to sit opposite to him while he ate his hasty breakfast behind the _Times_ newspaper. Even in his post-prandial slumbers he had a dim consciousness of that beloved presence. But he did not very frequently take the trouble to tell his young wife how dear she was to him. Having once won her to be the pride and delight of his quiet home, he took things for granted, and forgot that a man's real courtship only begins upon his wedding-day. If Cecil had complained of her life, Laurence O'Boyneville would have speedily set about adapting his existence to her pleasure; but she did not complain. She had married him because he loved her, and not because she loved him; and she shrank from indulging in the caprices which a wife who truly loved her husband would have exhibited without scruple. A profound weariness of spirit took possession of the barrister's wife in the bright June weather, when the days were too brief for the glory of western London, and the midsummer evenings too long for tranquil Bloomsbury. For some time before her marriage it had seemed to Cecil Chudleigh as if the serious business of her life had been done with. She was not unhappy. She was not discontented. But she had finished with all the eager hopes and desires of existence. She wished for nothing, she expected nothing. One only yearning--and that no ardent or passionate desire--had remained to her after the one great sorrow of her life,--she had wished for a home; she had wished to be something more than a waif and stray in other people's houses. This wish had been realised, and henceforward there was nothing left for her to hope or fear.