'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously; but she knew before he could answer, and throwing her objections to public caresses to the winds, for anything was better than that he should be hurt at just that moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head down and kissed him again,--lingeringly this time, a kiss of tender, appealing love. What must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no sign of it before. Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these other thoughts this thought: 'I am certainly abject.' This time he was quickly placated because of his excitement at getting home. 'Nobody can hurt me as you can,' was all he said. 'Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,' she breathed, her arm round his neck. Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on. 'Why doesn't she go?' whispered Lucy, making the most of having got his ear. 'Certainly not,' said Wemyss out loud, raising his head. 'I might want her. Do you like the hall, little Love?' '_Very_ much,' she said, loosing him. 'Don't you think it's a very fine staircase?' '_Very_ fine,' she said. He gazed about him with pride, standing in the middle of the Turkey carpet holding her close to his side. 'Now look at the window,' he said, turning her round when she had had time to absorb the staircase. 'Look--isn't it a jolly window? No nonsense about that window. You can really see out of it, and it really lets in light. Vera'--she winced--'tried to stuff it all up with curtains. She said she wanted colour, or something. Having got a beautiful garden to look out at, what does she try to do but shut most of it out again by putting up curtains.' The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the window, which was as big as a window in the waiting-room of a London terminus, had nothing to interfere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown holland blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole half of the garden on the right side of the front door with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows, and the cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat against it and made a loud irregular tapping in the pauses of Wemyss's observations. 'Plate glass,' he said. 'Yes,' said Lucy; and something in his voice made her add in a tone of admiration, 'Fancy.' Looking at the window they had their backs to the stairs. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down them from the landing above. 'Who's that?' she said quickly, with a little gasp, before she could think, before she could stop, not turning her head, her eyes staring at the window.