"I shall go to bed, Harry. I'm tired. I've been seeing that the maid's packed what I wanted, and it's harder work than packing oneself."
"Give me a kiss, Meg," he said, turning round.
She did not do that, but she accepted his kiss, and he, turning away abruptly, shaped his lips to resume his tune. But now the tune wouldn't come. His wife left him alone. The tune came when she was there. Now it wouldn't. Ah, but the words would. He muttered them inaudibly to himself as he stood looking out of the window. They sounded as though they must touch any woman's heart. With an oath he threw himself on to the sofa, trying now to banish the haunting words—the words that would not come at his call, and came, in belated uselessness, to mock him now. He lay still; and they ran through his head. At last they ceased; but, before he could thank God for that, a strange sense of desolation came over him. He looked round the empty, silent room, that seemed larger now than in its busy daylight hours. The house was all still; there might have been one lying dead in it. It might have been the house of a man who had lost his wife.
CHAPTER XI.
AGAINST HIS COMING.
"The great Napoleon once observed——"
"Don't quote from 'Anecdotes, New and Old,'" interrupted Adela unkindly.
"That when his death was announced," pursued Lord Semingham, who thought it good for Adela to take no notice of such interruptions, "everybody would say Ouf. I say 'Ouf' now," and he stretched his arms luxuriously to their full length. "There's room here," he added, explaining the gesture.