His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he forgot when he awoke. Only this naïve question and answer betrayed what had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate knowledge vanished. Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight. “What would it just be like now?” said he to himself. He had to give his heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs. “It is impossible it is gone!” he cried to himself. “It can’t be gone. I looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can’t be gone now. Helena is not lost to me, surely.” Then he began a long pining for the departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it was keen, was half pleasure. Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room next to his, and he heard her: “Frank, it’s a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.” “All right, Mother. Why didn’t you call me sooner?” grumbled the lad. “I didn’t wake myself. I didn’t go to sleep till morning, and then I slept.” She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed. The minutes passed. “The young donkey, why doesn’t he get out?” said Siegmund angrily to himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and anxiety. When the suave, velvety “Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!” of the clock was heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of the stairs: “Do you want any hot water?” “You know there isn’t time for me to shave now,” answered her son, lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto. The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs: “Mam!” She wailed. “Mam!” Still Beatrice did not hear her. “Mam! Mamma!” Beatrice was in the scullery. “Mamma-a!” The child was getting impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: “Mam? Mamma!” Still no answer. “Mam-mee-e!” she squealed. Siegmund could hardly contain himself. “Why don’t you go down and ask?” Vera called crossly from the bedroom.