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Grace had looked at him steadily for some moments, and he had stared at her with something like defiance.

“Jimmy,” Grace had said quietly, “I think I had better ask Pat not to come here again.”

“Don’t be silly,” he had retorted roughly. “Because I dare to complain of something once in ten years, you immediately assume another woman. If you want to know my honest opinion of your friend Patricia, I think she’s next door to impossible. Regards me as though I were a little off mental balance. Her conceit of herself makes me sick!”

Afterwards he had realised, with something of a shock, that he had committed perjury in order to escape his conscience and the pain in the eyes of Grace.

****

On each of her ensuing visits it seemed that Patricia had taken from him a little more of the contentment which had been his, leaving in its place an increase in restlessness and the tendency to make carping criticism of his home, his wife and his child.

His work began to worry him at this time. He had complained that the fount of inspiration in Grace was running dry. He had accused her of using the same old plots, and had quarrelled with her when she had suggested that his treatment of his themes had become neither one thing nor the other—neither men’s stories nor women’s.

He had begun to resent the smell of cooking in the house.

“How can I write romance when the place reeks of boiling cabbage?” he had demanded of Grace on one occasion.

“Don’t be silly,” Grace had retorted, sharply for her. “The cabbage must be cooked. You must eat.”

“Surely there’s no necessity to feed me cabbage every day.”

“We haven’t had cabbage for over a week, Jimmy. I think you want a holiday, young man.”