Then she stopped and saw who he was.
"I know, gone to bed," he answered. "Will you tell your mistress that her husband has come home."
And the maid went. She knocked at her mistress's room and gave the message through the closed door:
"I was to say that the master has come back."
Her mistress asked from within:
"What do you say, is your master come back? Who told you to say so?"
"The master himself. He's standing outside."
There are sounds of sore distraction in the mistress's room, hurried whispers, a door opening and closing again. Then all is still.
And the master walks in. His wife receives him with death in her heart.
"The club was shut," he says at once, from pity and compassion. "I sent you a message so as not to alarm you."