And he was still smiling as he turned in.
II
With fingers that fumbled over the unaccustomed stiff shirt, Hugh Massingham was dressing for dinner. His first dinner with his wife for four years. It was the moment he had dreamed of through long, sweltering days in Mesopotamia—and now that it had come, he was afraid.
Things were different to what he had expected; Delia was different. He could hear her now, moving about in the next room, and her voice as she spoke to her maid. Somehow, he hadn't expected that maid. He had hoped—well, it didn't much matter what he'd hoped. Anyway, it was absurd: naturally, his wife would have a maid.
It wasn't that that made him pause every now and again and stare a little blankly in front of him; it was something far bigger and more fundamental than such a triviality as a maid. And even to himself he would hardly acknowledge what it was. She was shy—naturally, any woman would be after such a long separation. And then the idea of associating shyness with his singularly self-possessed and lovely wife made him smile grimly. It was not that. No, it was simply—and Hugh Massingham took a deep breath like a man about to dive—it was simply that she had become a stranger to him. Or, to put it more accurately, he had become a stranger to her. The kiss which she had given him had been such as a sister would give to her brother. True, there had not been much time—some people had arrived to play bridge and had remained most of the afternoon. Delia wouldn't hear of their going away, though they had half suggested it. And he had spent the afternoon at his club—the afternoon of which he'd dreamed through four long weary years. A stranger—he was a stranger in his own house. With a twisted apology for a smile, he put on his coat and switched out the light. Time doubtless would straighten out the situation; but there had been enough time, already in their married life. There had been four years.
Dinner, perfectly served and faultlessly cooked, merely continued the hollow mockery of his home-coming. He felt that he might have been dining with any pretty woman at any house; not with his wife in his own. In fact, except that he happened to pay for it, it wasn't his house. Everything about it was hers—except himself. He was merely the stranger within his own gates.
"A little different, Delia, to what I had imagined it," he remarked, quietly, as the servant, having placed the port in front of him, left the room.
For a moment she looked at him narrowly; then she leaned back in her chair.
"In what way?" she asked, calmly. "Don't you think the flat is comfortable?"
They had got to have a straight talk anyway; perhaps it was as well, she reflected, to get it over and done with. There was no good starting on false pretences.