And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: “What do you want?” “Where’s my stockings?” cried the child at the top of her voice. “Why do you ask me? Are they down here?” replied her mother. “What are you shouting for?” The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed into Vera’s room, she grumbled: “And now they’re not mended.” Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out. She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her feet as she went downstairs. “Mam,” Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, “has dad come?” The answer and the child’s further talk were lost in the distance of the kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen’s feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more. He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and meet them all. The front door banged, and he heard Frank’s hasty call: “Good-bye!” Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go downstairs. It was nine o’clock. The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the bathroom—his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She knocked loudly. “All right,” said he. Then she went downstairs. He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera’s voice said coldly, beneath his window outside: “You should clear away, then. We don’t want the breakfast things on the table for a week.” Siegmund’s heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair, but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge and proceeded to wipe away the soap.