"One of your old pyjama suits is in the dressing-room chest-of-drawers," she said, as he went on up the front stairs, leaning heavily on the handrail. "I—I have one or two things to do, Ferdie."
He turned, looking down, dominating her even now in her miserable triumph.
"All right," he said, "I—I will sleep in the dressing-room. Don't be long, Violet," and Ferdinand Walbridge went to bed.
Mrs. Walbridge took up the pot of paint and the sprawling brush from where they were lying on the pavement and looked at the words on the gate. "Happy" stood out neatly, but the "H" in "House" was obliterated by a great splash, and the remaining letters, untouched by the fresh paint, looked by contrast more faded and faint than ever.
"Dear me," she thought, "what a mess." And then, because she was a tidy woman, as well as to avoid questions and conjectures, she rubbed off the smear of paint as well as she could with one of the new Paris handkerchiefs, and resumed her interrupted task.
In a few moments her work was done, and the words she had chosen for the new house thirty years ago showed out once more distinctly on the green gate. She rose to her knees, too tired for thought, sensible only of a violent longing for sleep; to-morrow, she knew, she must think. She must think about the turn things were taking; about the coming back of her husband, and the resumption of the old daily routine; of Ferdie's fretfulness, of liver for breakfast, and, most of all, she must think about Sir John Barclay.
"Poor John," she thought, giving a last look at the words on the gate, "and poor Ferdie. Oh, how tired I am——" she went into the house and shut the door.