"Then you don't care for it? You think it's ridiculous?" said she anxiously, when she had sat down.

He replied, standing in front of her:

"You know that Oxford Concise Dictionary that I bought just before the war? Where is it?"

"Arthur!" she said. "What's the matter with you? You look so queer. I suppose the dictionary's where you keep it. I never touch it."

"I want you to be sure to remind me to cross the word 'economy' out of it to-night. In fact I think I'd better tear out the whole page."

"Arthur!" she exclaimed again. "Are you ill? Has anything serious happened? I warn you I can't stand much more to-day."

"Something very serious has happened," answered the incorrigible Mr. Prohack. "It may be all for the best; it may be all for the worst. Depends how you look at it. Anyway I'm determined to tell you. Of course I shouldn't dream of telling anybody else until I'd told you." He seated himself by her side. There was just space enough for the two of them on the sofa.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Prohack, with apprehension, and instinctively she stretched her arm out and extinguished one of the lights.

He had been touched by her manoeuvre, half economy and half coquetry, with the Chinese dress. He was still more touched by the gesture of extinguishing a light. For a year or two past Mrs. Prohack had been putting forward a theory that an average degree of illumination tried her eyes, and the household was now accustomed to twilit rooms in the evening. Mr. Prohack knew that the recent taste for obscurity had nothing to do with her eyes and everything to do with her years, but he pretended to be deceived by her duplicity. Not for millions would he have given her cause to suspect that he was not perfectly deceived. He understood and sympathised with her in all her manifestations. He did not select choice pieces of her character for liking, and dislike or disapprove of the rest. He took her undivided, unchipped, and liked the whole of her. It was very strange.

When he married her he had assumed, but was not sure, that he loved her. For thirteen or fourteen years she had endangered the bond between them by what seemed to him to be her caprices, illogicalities, perversities, and had saved it by her charming demonstrations of affection. During this period he had remained as it were neutral—an impassive spectator of her union with a man who happened to be himself. He had 

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