Esme passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and joined in the general talk. The meal seemed interminable. The children were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food. Their mother urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions. Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point. The children ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his annoyance on them and sent them away from the table. "That's your fault," he said to his wife. "You are always nagging at the kids. We never get a meal in peace." Esme listened and wondered. What was wrong with this household? These two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they were seldom in agreement on any subject. She wondered whether all married people got on one another's nerves. Marriage was a difficult problem. It occurred to Esme that the solution of the difficulty might be reached by it generous use of tact. Without her volition her reflections found verbal expression. "Tact!" she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers. "That's the secret of happiness--immense tact. Jim, I think you are the most tactless person in the world." Book 2--CHAPTER THIRTEEN. During the first few days after her return to her sister's home time hung dismally for Esme. It would have been better had she gone back to work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless, a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference was that there was something wrong with herself. Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She had gone into Esme's room and taken up a book, which lay on the little table beside her bed, and opened it casually. "Who is Paul Hallam?" she asked, reading the name inside the cover. Esme swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister's hand, and coloured warmly. "A man who was staying at the Zuurberg." "And he gave you this book?" "Yes--to read in the train." The two sisters looked at one another. Rose waited for further information, but it was not forthcoming. She laid the book down, and Esme resumed brushing her hair. It was pretty hair, soft and wavy. The older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went forward, took the brush from the girl's hand, and brushed it for her. "Tell me about him," she urged.