“About a man and a woman who meet and are happy.” “Somewhat of a _tour de force_, I conclude.” He frowned. “In literature we needn’t intrude our own limitations. I’m not so silly as to think that all marriages turn out like mine. My character is to blame for our catastrophe, not marriage.” “My dear, I too have married; marriage is to blame.” But here again he seemed to know better. “Well,” she said, leaving the table and moving with her dessert to the mantelpiece, “so you are abandoning marriage and taking to literature. And are happy.” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because, as we used to say at Cambridge, the cow is there. The world is real again. This is a room, that a window, outside is the night—” “Go on.” He pointed to the floor. “The day is straight below, shining through other windows into other rooms.” “You are very odd,” she said after a pause, “and I do not like you at all. There you sit, eating my biscuits, and all the time you know that the earth is round. Who taught you? I am going to bed now, and all the night, you tell me, you and I and the biscuits go plunging eastwards, until we reach the sun. But breakfast will be at nine as usual. Good-night.” She rang the bell twice, and her maid came with her candle and her walking-stick: it was her habit of late to go to her room as soon as dinner was over, for she had no one to sit up with. Rickie was impressed by her loneliness, and also by the mixture in her of insight and obtuseness. She was so quick, so clear-headed, so imaginative even. But all the same, she had forgotten what people were like. Finding life dull, she had dropped lies into it, as a chemist drops a new element into a solution, hoping that life would thereby sparkle or turn some beautiful colour. She loved to mislead others, and in the end her private view of false and true was obscured, and she misled herself. How she must have enjoyed their errors over Stephen! But her own error had been greater, inasmuch as it was spiritual entirely. Leighton came in with some coffee. Feeling it unnecessary to light the drawing-room lamp for one small young man, he persuaded Rickie to say he preferred the dining-room. So Rickie sat down by the fire playing with one of the lumps of chalk. His thoughts went back to the ford, from which they had scarcely wandered. Still he heard the horse in the dark drinking, still he saw the mystic rose, and the tunnel dropping diamonds. He had driven away alone, believing the earth had confirmed him. He stood behind things at last, and knew that conventions are not majestic, and that they will not claim us in the end. As he mused, the chalk slipped from his fingers, and fell on the coffee-cup, which broke. The china, said Leighton, was expensive. He believed it was impossible to match it now. Each cup was different. It was a harlequin set. The saucer, without the cup, was therefore useless. Would Mr. Elliot please explain to Mrs. Failing how it happened. Rickie promised he would explain.