Ernie came out into the darkened passage.
The kitchen-door was wide.
Through it the two brothers stared at each other, Ernie standing in the dusk, Alf sitting in the gas-light.
Then Ernie spoke.
"Tellin the tale, Alf?" he said with quiet irony. Alf waved his brother away.
"You've broke my eart," he said, "and your mother's. Not as you care, not you!"
"If that's all I've broke I ain't done much 'arm, old son," came the still voice out of the dusk; and the outer door shut.
His wife was the one creature in the world to whom Edward Caspar was consistently hard; and her husband the only one to whom Anne was unfailingly considerate.
In her inmost consciousness she knew the reason of her husband's attitude, and bowed to it as to an inexorable ordinance of Nature. Throughout her married life she had paid the penalty of the woman who has taken the lead in matters of sex. Fierce though she was, there were few more old-fashioned than Anne Caspar, and from the start she had seemed to recognize and be resigned to the justice of her fate.
That night as the couple went to bed, Edward said from the dressing-room with a touch of tenderness he rarely showed his wife: