He got up, went over to the hearth, on which a small wood fire was burning, straddled his legs, bent his knees and straightened them several times, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers, which were rather tight and horsey and defined his immense limbs. An expression of profound self-satisfaction illumined his face as he looked at his wife, giving it a slightly leery expression, as of a shrewd rustic. His large blunt features seemed to broaden, his big brown eyes twinkled, and his lips, which were thick and very red and had a cleft down their middle, parted under his short bronze moustache, exposing two level rows of square white teeth. “It’s jolly difficult to imagine you an ugly woman,” he said, with a deep chuckle. “I do wish you’d keep your legs still,” said Lady Holme. “What earthly pleasure can it give you to go on like that? Would you love me as you do now?” “You’d be jolly sick if I didn’t, wouldn’t you, Vi, eh?” “I wonder if it ever occurs to you that you’re hideously conceited, Fritz?” She spoke with a touch of real anger, real exasperation. “No more than any other Englishman that’s worth his salt and ever does any good in the world. I ain’t a timid molly-coddle, if that’s what you mean.” He took one large hand out of his pocket, scratched his cheek and yawned. As he did so he looked as unconcerned, as free from self-consciousness, as much a slave to every impulse born of passing physical sensation as a wild animal in a wood or out on a prairie. “Otherwise life ain’t worth tuppence,” he added through his yawn. Lady Holme sat looking at him for a moment in silence. She was really irritated by his total lack of interest in what she wanted to interest in him, irritated, too, because her curiosity remained unsatisfied. But that abrupt look and action of absolutely unconscious animalism, chasing the leeriness of the contented man’s conceit, turned her to softness if not to cheerfulness. She adored Fritz like that. His open-mouthed, gaping yawn moved something in her to tenderness. She would have liked to kiss him while he was yawning and to pass her hands over his short hair, which was like a mat and grew as strongly as the hair which he shaved every morning from his brown cheeks. “Well, what about bed, old girl?” he said, stretching himself. Lady Holme did not reply. Some part of him, some joint, creaked as he forced his clasped hands downward and backward. She was listening eagerly for a repetition of the little sound. “What! Is mum the word?” he said, bending forward to stare into her face.