The next night the air poured in at an open window, silently lifting long light muslin curtains and waving them about the little narrow room filled as with moonlight by the soft blue light from the street-lamp below. The sound of the sea drowned the present in the sense of sea-side summers; bringing back moments of chance wakenings on sea-side holidays, when the high blaze of yesterday and to-morrow were together in the darkness. Miriam slept at once and woke refreshed and careless in the frosty sunrise. Her room was blazing with golden light. She lay motionless, contemplating it. There was no sound in the house. She could watch the sunlight till something happened. Harry would see that she got up in time for breakfast. There would be sunlight at breakfast in the room below; and Harry and Gerald and the remains of Christmas leisure..... “We only keep going because of Elspeth.” How could she have gone off to sleep last night without recalling that? If Harry and Gerald found marriage a failure, it was a failure. Perhaps it was a passing phase and they would think differently later on. But they had spoken so simply, as if it were a commonplace fact known to everybody ... they had met so many people by this time. Nearly all their lodgers had been married, and unhappy. Perhaps that was because they were nearly all theatrical people? If Harry had stayed in London and not had to work for a living would she have been happier? No; she was gayer down here; even more herself. It _amused_ her to have rushes, and turn out three rooms after ten o’clock at night. They both seemed to run the house as a sort of joke, and remained absolutely themselves. Perhaps that was just in talking about it, at Christmas, to her. It certainly must be horrible in the season, as Harry said, the best part of the house packed with selfish strangers for the very best part of the year; so much to do for them all day that there was never even time to run down to the sea...... Visitors did not think of that. If they considered their landlady it would spoil their one fortnight of being free. Landladies ought to be old; not minding about working all day for other people and never seeing the sea. Harry was too young to be a landlady ...... the gently moving curtains were flat against the window again for a moment, a veil of thin muslin screening the brilliant gold, making it an even tone all over the room; a little oblong of misty golden light. Even for Harry’s sake she could not let any tinge of sadness invade it... That was being exactly like the summer visitors... “Good _Gracious_!” The door was open and Harry, entering with a jug of hot water was enveloped in the end of the out-blown curtains. “Why on Earth d’you have your window like that? It’s simply _bitter_.” “I love it” said Miriam, watching Harriett’s active little moving form battle with the flying draperies. “I’m revelling in it.”