The dining-room was a narrow room full of a table. It had a window facing west and a window facing north, and in spite of the uninterrupted expanses of plate glass was a bleak, dark room. But then the weather was bleak and dark, and one saw such a lot of it out of the two big windows as one sat at the long table and watched the rolling clouds blowing straight towards one from the north-west; for Lucy's place was facing the north window, on Wemyss's left hand. Wemyss sat at the end of the table facing the west window. The table was so long that if Lucy had sat in the usual seat of wives, opposite her husband, communication would have been difficult,--indeed, as she remarked, she would have disappeared below the dip of the horizon. 'I like a long table,' said Wemyss to this. 'It looks so hospitable.' 'Yes,' said Lucy a little doubtfully, but willing to admit that its length at least showed a readiness for hospitality. 'I suppose it does. Or it would if there were people all round it.' 'People? You don't mean to say you want people already?' 'Good heavens no,' said Lucy hastily. 'Of course I don't. Why, of course, Everard, I didn't mean that,' she added, laying her hand on his and smiling at him so as to dispel the gathering cloud on his face; and once more she flung all thoughts of the parlourmaid to the winds. 'You know I don't want a soul in the world but you.' 'Well, that's what I thought,' said Wemyss, mollified. 'I know all I want is you.' (Was this same parlourmaid here in Vera's time? Lucy asked herself very privately and unconsciously and beneath the concerned attentiveness she was concentrating on Wemyss.) 'What lovely kingcups!' she said aloud. 'Oh yes, there they are--I hadn't noticed them. Yes, aren't they? They're my birthday flowers.' And he repeated his formula: 'It's my birthday and Spring's.' But Lucy, of course, didn't know the proper ritual, it being her first experience of one of Wemyss's birthdays, besides having wished him his many happy returns hours ago when he first opened his eyes and found hers gazing at him with love; so all she did was to make the natural but unfortunate remark that surely Spring began on the 21st of March,--or was it the 25th? No, that was Christmas Day--no, she didn't mean that---- 'You're always saying things and then saying you didn't mean them,' interrupted Wemyss, vexed, for he thought that Lucy of all people should have recognised the allegorical nature of his formula. If it had been Vera, now,--but even Vera had managed to understand that much. 'I wish you would begin with what you do mean, it would be so much simpler. What, pray, _do_ you mean now?' 'I can't think,' said Lucy timidly, for she had offended him again, and this time she couldn't even remotely imagine how. XVII