"
I've got a taxi outside," said Lucas.
"A taxi?" she repeated in a disappointed tone. And then, as an afterthought: "Well, I have to call at Debenham's."
The fact was that Laurencine wanted to be seen walking with her military officer in some well-frequented thoroughfare. They lived at Hampstead.
Lois rang the bell.
"Ask nurse to bring the children down, please—at once," she told the parlourmaid.
"So this is the new tea-gown, if I mistake not!" observed Lucas in the pause. " Très chic ! I suppose Laurencine's told you all about the chauffeur being run off with against his will by a passionate virgin. I couldn't start the car this morning myself."
"You never could start a car by yourself, my boy," said George. "What's this about the passionate virgin?"
V
George woke up in the middle of the night. Lois slept calmly; he could just hear her soft breathing. He thought of all the occupied bedrooms, of the health of children, the incalculable quality in wives, the touchy stupidity of nurses and servants. The mere human weight of the household oppressed him terribly. And he thought of the adamant of landlords, the shifty rapacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the mere pompous foolishness of Government departments, the arrogance of Jew patrons, and the terrifying complexity of problems of architecture on a large scale. He was the Atlas supporting a vast world a thousand times more complex than any problem of architecture. He wondered how he did it. But he did do it, alone; and he kept on doing it. Let him shirk the burden, and not a world but an entire universe would crumble. If he told Lois that he was going to leave her, she would collapse; she would do dreadful things. He was indispensable not only at home but professionally. All was upon his shoulders and upon nobody else's. He was bound, he was a prisoner, he had no choice, he was performing his highest duty, he was fulfilling the widest usefulness of which he was capable ... Besides, supposing he did go insane and shirk the burden, they would all say that he had been influenced by Lucas's