Life was not much more varied than a big turnip-field in which two or three coveys of birds were put up, some to be killed, some to be wounded, some to whir away into turnip-fields beyond. "Which means that I'm still thoroughly exhausted," Dorothy murmured. "But I can't think of the past because he is there, and the future seems dreary because he will never be there." When at the beginning of October the moment came to drive up to London, the problems of birth and death, of love and happiness, were overshadowed by the refusal of the car to go even as far as Exeter. "We really must get a Lee-Lonsdale," said Tony. He made this announcement in the same tone, Dorothy reflected bitterly, as he had announced that they would have another baby. When the butler opened the door of 129 Curzon Street, the house was full of birds' singing. "Canaries, don't you know, and all that," Tony explained. "I thought you'd like to be reminded of the country." Dorothy looked at him sharply to see if he was teasing her, but he was serious enough, and for the first time since that night in June when her son was born dead she was able to feel an affection for him so personal and so intimate that if they had been alone at the moment she might have flung herself into his arms. He had taken a box for the theater that night and was most eager for her to dine out with him, but she was much tired after the journey and excused herself. Since he was evidently dismayed by the prospect of an unemployed evening, she begged him to go without her, which after a short and not very stoutly contested argument he agreed to do. Dorothy went up early to her bedroom, where for a long while she sat at the open window, listening to the traffic. How often she had sat thus at the window of her bedroom in Halfmoon Street and what promises of grandeur had then seemed implicit in the majestic sound. Only three years ago she had still been in Halfmoon Street; she could actually remember one October night like this, an October night when the still warm body of a dead summer was being pricked by wintry spears. On such a night as this Olive had called to her not to take cold, had warned her that it was bad for her voice to sit at an open window. She had been thinking about herself in Debrett and planning to be a marchioness; it was Olive's interruption which had brought home sharply to her the necessity of cutting herself off forever from the theater if she married Clarehaven. Yes, it had been a night just like this, and that other window was not five minutes away from where she was sitting now. A taxi humming round a distant corner reminded Dorothy of an evening on the lawns at Clare when Doctor Lane had lectured her on the habits of night-jars.