"No; I'm not forgetting it. But do you think position is everything to a woman?"
"No; but she likes a home."
"Then why do you think I gave up mine?"
"I didn't know you had given it up. I thought you had been compelled to earn your living."
"No; not at all. My father was a clergyman down in Kent. He only died last year. My mother still lives there and my two sisters. I could have a home there if I wished to go back to it."
He looked at her in a little amazement. "I suppose I don't understand women," he said genuinely.
She looked up into his uninteresting face—the weak, protruding lower lip, the drooping moustache that hung on to it—then she smiled.
"I suppose, really, you don't," she agreed. "I think we'll go back; I'm getting cold."
They walked back silently together, all the night sounds of the river soothing to her ears, jarring to his. A train rushed by, thundering over the bridge from Gunnersbury way; he looked at it, frowning, waiting for the noise to cease; she watched it contentedly, thinking that it had come from the Temple where Traill was a barrister-at-law.
"Then I suppose it's no good my saying any more," said Mr. Arthur, as he stood at the door with his latch-key ready in the lock. He waited for her answer before he turned it.