‘Darling, don’t talk so lightly about such a dreadful subject. God has joined us together, and of course I should not think of divorcing you if you came down to dinner in an up-and-down collar. It would be very wrong of me. But, oh, Kingston dear, I do hope you never will. It is so easy to be tidy. Your tie is all crooked this morning, dear.’ Her husband whistled instead of answering, as he helped himself to cold ham. A man may let a woman mend his morals or his mind, but he would rather suffer any reasonable torture than have it suspected that she meddles with his clothes. When Kingston returned to the table Gundred was ready with a renewed supply of tea. ‘Nice and fresh and hot,’ she advertised. ‘Let me give you another cup.’ She poured out for each, adding cream in fair quantity to her own, and lavishly to her husband’s. This was a habitual little silent proof of her love for him, and had no reference to the fact that he particularly disliked cream in his tea. As for herself, she expected Kingston always to remember and respect her avoidance of sugar. But then his tastes were wrong, while hers were right. For he was Kingston, a man: and she was Gundred, a good wife. ‘You’ve put cream in,’ protested Kingston, wrying his mouth at the taste. ‘Have I, dear? I’m so sorry. Take my cup instead. I have not touched it.’ She gave her cup a rapid final stir to make the cream disappear amid the tea, then handed it to him, and watched complacently while he drank it without any further complaint. She imagined that he was deceived, and felt herself happily embarked on that career of small benevolent falsehoods which make so necessary a part of the good wife’s success. She foresaw innumerable ways of cheating him for his own good, of making him eat veal in disguise, of teaching him to like rabbit by serving it up as chicken cream. As a matter of fact he fully realized what she had done, but knew that it was useless to make a protest. He had learnt by now in a fortnight that all opposition to Gundred’s ideas was unprofitable. She had a firm notion that cream was good for him. Therefore cream he was evidently doomed to have, for the sake of domestic peace--and in quantities, too, as generous as the love that poured them out. Gundred had the bland pertinacity of the martyr, combined with the imperturbable self-complacence of the Pharisee. Before her gentle, inexorable determinations all hostile resolves were as the stone which an incessant drip of water permeates and dissolves. Kingston swallowed his polluted tea as quickly as possible; then, breakfast being over, began to think of the day’s news. He offered his wife a paper.