Without replying to his words, she sat looking up at him while her thoughts, escaping her control, flew from the warm room out into the rough autumn weather. It was as if she felt the beating of the rain in her soul, as if she were torn from her security and whirled downward and onward in the violence of the storm. On the surface of her life nothing had changed. The fire still burned; the lights and shadows still flickered over the Persian rugs; her husband still stood there, looking down on her through the cloudless blue of his eyes. But the real Margaret, the vital part of her, was hidden far away in that deep place where the seeds of mysterious impulses and formless desires lie buried. She knew that there were secrets within herself which she had never acknowledged in her own thoughts; that there were unexpressed longings which had never taken shape even in her imagination. Somewhere beneath the civilization of the ages there was the skeleton of the savage. The letter in her bosom scorched her as if it were fire. “That was why you used to call me magnolia blossom,” she said in a colourless voice, and knew it was only the superficial self that was speaking. His face softened; yet so perfectly had the note of sentiment come to be understood rather than expressed in their lives that she could feel his embarrassment. The glow lingered in his eyes, but he answered only, “Yes, you were always like that.” An irrepressible laugh broke from her. Oh, the irony, the bitterness! “Perhaps you like them pale!” she tossed back mockingly, and wondered if this Rose Morrison who had written to her was coloured like her name? He looked puzzled but solicitous. “I’m afraid I must be off. If you are not tired, could you manage to go over these galleys this afternoon? I’d like to read the last chapter aloud to you after the corrections are made.” He had written a book on the history of law; and while he drew the roll of proof sheets from his pocket, she remembered, with a pang as sharp as the stab of a knife, all the work of last summer when they had gathered material together. He needed her for his work, she realized, if not for his pleasure. She stood, as she had always done, for the serious things of his life. This book could not have been written without her. Even his success in his profession had been the result of her efforts as well as his own. “I’m never too tired for that,” she responded, and though she smiled up at him, it was a smile that hurt her with its irony. “Well, my time’s up,” he said. “By the way. I’ll need my heavier golf things if it is fine to-morrow.” To-morrow was Sunday, and he played golf with a group of men at the Country Club every Sunday morning. “They are in the cedar closet. I’ll get them out.” “The medium ones, you know. That English tweed.” “Yes, I know. I’ll have them ready,” Did Rose Morrison play golf, she wondered.