It all worked splendidly. In those early years, when two were in the nursery and as yet no third, there wasn’t a sign that Harry who had married for a home ever could say, “I have a right to a home.” He had, and he was often saying so, the most perfect home. He came not home of a night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary confinement and avid he should hear the tale of them, nor yet to one that butterflied the day long between idleness and pleasures and gave him what was left. He came nightly to a home that his wife sought as eagerly as he sought, a place of rest well-earned and peace well-earned. That was it! “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” They had discovered and had removed the worm of disparity that eats away the heart of countless marriages. They not infrequently had friends in to dinner, not infrequently dined at the tables of friends, made a point of not infrequently attending a theatre or a concert; but however the evening had been passed--and the evenings alone were always agreed to be the best evenings of all--there was none but they ended sitting together, not in the drawing-room, but in Harry’s study or in hers, just talking happiness. Equal in endeavour, they were thereby made equal on every plane and in every taste. A reciprocating machine. That was it! At least that was how, profoundly satisfied with it, she thought it was. Then Benji came. CHAPTER VI There were attendant upon the expectation and the coming of Benji certain processes of mind that had not been with Huggo or with Doda. When it was in prospect she had vexation, sometimes a sense of injury, that again her work was to be interrupted. It would make no difference to Harry. It happened that the days of her trial were timed to fall on the date when a criminal prosecution of sensational public interest was due for hearing at the Old Bailey. Harry, for the defence, had added immensely to his brilliant reputation when seeing it through the preliminary stages before the magistrate. The Old Bailey proceedings were to be the greatest event, thus far, in his career. He had told her--how proud and delighted to hear it she had been!--that if he pulled it off (and he had set his heart on pulling it off) he would really begin to think about “taking silk.”