“What is it? What is it?” demanded a weak, querulous, mournful voice.
Mrs. Earlforward vaguely extended her hand, and it touched something which for several seconds she could not identify. It touched Elsie’s cap. Elsie had sunk to her knees by the bedside. She burst into weeping.
“Oh, ’m!” sobbed Elsie. “Oh, ’m! I’ve gone and eaten the steak. I don’t know what made me do it, ’m, but I’ve eaten the steak and I run straight in to tell you, ’m.”
VI
Evening
Violet laughed in the dark: an unusual laugh, not vivacious nor hearty, but a laugh.
“I’m glad, Elsie,” she said, withdrawing her hand as though Elsie’s cap had been red-hot.
Elsie, dismissed, felt relieved, but at the same time she was disappointed of her rich, tearful penitence, and she went away with the sensation that the world was an incomprehensible and arid place. Violet got out of bed and turned on the light, and the light somehow cured her perspective of a strange distortion. What! Make a tragedy because a man preferred not to eat a bit of steak for his tea! Absurd! Childish! Surely he had the right to refuse steak without being insulted, without being threatened with the destruction of his happiness! It was not as if he had forbidden his wife to eat steak. Thus did Violet try to nullify to herself the effect of her wild words in the dining room and to create that which they had destroyed. Fortunately, Henry did not know that she had retired to bed, and so she could rise again without loss of dignity. She was very courageous at first, but when she had finished dressing, and was ready to go downstairs and face Henry once more, she was no better than a timorous young thing, defenceless and trembling.
As for Henry, he was working, and really working, in his office; but, as he worked, the idea pervading his mind was that he had had a serious shock. He had won; but had he won? He had deemed himself to be secure on the throne, and the throne was shaking, toppling. He had miscalculated Violet and underestimated the possibilities of the married state. He saw, for the first time clearly, that certain conjugal problems are not to be solved by reason, and that if he wished to survive the storms of a woman’s temperament he must be a traitor to reason and intellectual uprightness. In brief, the game must obviously be catch-as-catch-can. Ah! He was deceived in Violet. Because she would not pay more than sixpence for a needed book, and because she had surpassed himself in sweating a charwoman, he had been fool enough to believe that she was worthy to be his partner in the grand passion of his life. Well, he was wrong. He must count her in future as the enemy of his passion, and plot accordingly.
Then at length the weak creature, the broken reed upon which he had depended, reappeared in the doorway of his office, and she was not wearing her mantle. Henry had in that moment a magnificent inspiration. He limped from his chair at the desk and put a match to the fire, which was laid—which had been laid for many months. The fuel seemed anxious to oblige, and flared up eagerly. Violet was touched by the attention, whose spirit she comprehended and welcomed. All warm and melting from the bed and her tears, she let him masterfully take her in his clasp. And he felt her acquiescence, and the moment was the most exquisite of his whole life. Her frailty, her weakness, merely adorned and enhanced her—were precious, were the finest part of her charm. Reason was not. But whether he had won, or she, he could not decide; he could only hope for the best. Not a word said! They held each other near the warmth of the mounting fire in the office, with the dark shop stretching behind for a background. And Violet remembered how once she had jauntily told herself that at any rate she possessed one advantage over him—her long experience of marriage against his inexperience—and she saw that the advantage was quite illusory, and she was humbled, deliciously rueful! He said:
“I think you’ve got the key of my desk, haven’t you?”
She nodded, gave a precarious smile, and ardently produced the key. The next moment he had taken the day’s receipts, save Mr. Bauersch’s money, from the tin box which was their appointed place in the top middle drawer, and husband and wife counted them together, checking one another, and checking the total with the written list of sales already delivered to Henry by Violet.
“Correct,” said he, and was about to open his safe, when he stopped and added:
“Better get that Bauersch money first. I suppose you put it in your safe?”
“Yes. I’ll run up for it.” As instructed, she had transferred the important sum for safety during the day from the drawer to her own safe.
“I’ll go with you,” said he, as if anxious not to deprive himself of her society even for one minute. As they were entering the bathroom he
