"You wouldn't like me to be always the same, would you?" "No, but--" He broke off, and turned away with a sigh to regard the melancholy street-lamps twinkling through the lime-trees at the end of the garden. "I think it's I who ought to be angry, not you," said Norah. "I offered to marry you at once, and you instantly began to make excuses." "Norah!" protested the young man. "Oh, how I hate everything!" she burst out, looking round her with a sharper consciousness than she had ever experienced before of the drawing-room's ugliness and life's banality. At this moment Mrs. Caffyn put her head timidly round the door. "You'd better come back to the dining-room, dear," she advised. "I think father's just noticed you're not there." "That's exactly what I meant him to do." "Norah!" exclaimed her mother, in a shocked voice. "What has come over you these last two days?" Wilfred was supporting the small of his back in an unsuccessful effort to look at ease, and Norah was wondering more than ever how she could ever have fancied herself in love with him. How awkward he appeared standing there, almost--she hesitated a moment before she allowed herself to think the worst it was possible to think of anybody--almost common! She looked half apprehensively at Wilfred to see if he had divined her unspoken thought. She would not like him to know that she was thinking him--almost common; he might never get over it. She was sure he was particularly sensitive on that point because in _The Red Lamp_ he was always declaiming against snobbery. Suddenly they heard the dining-room door open, and Mrs. Caffyn had barely time to breathe an agonized, "Oh, dear, what did I tell you would happen?" before the head of the house came in. Upon the dining-room an appalled silence must have fallen when Mr. Caffyn rose from his chair, and one could fancy the frightened players, cues in hands, huddled against the wall in dread of the imminent catastrophe. The whole house was electric as before an impending storm, and above the stillness the mutter of a passing omnibus sounded like remote thunder. With so much atmospheric help Mr. Caffyn ought to have been able to achieve something more impressive than his, "Oh, you're in here, are you? I wish you wouldn't light the gas in the drawing-room when there's no need for it." "I thought you wouldn't like us to sit in the dark," Norah murmured, primly. "Don't deliberately misunderstand me. You know perfectly well what I mean. Moreover, I don't think it's nice for the children; it may put all sorts of ideas into their young heads."