"I won't give myself a chance. I'll put you to bed and then I'll go home."
Julia was like a mother to Marie when she helped her to undress, and tucked her up in the bed beside the infant's cot. And when Marie asked anxiously, with her mind still troubled: "Julia, you know that I love baby, don't you?" she was warm in her assurances.
"Would you mind," said Marie, "making up the dining-room fire a little, please, dear, in case Osborn is cold when he comes in?"
Julia stroked on her gloves slowly. "Certainly," she replied, after a pause.
"I should only put on a couple of lumps, dear," said Marie from the bed.
"Righto!" Julia answered at the door. "Good night, babies!"
Very softly she closed the door and left them.
She stood for a few moments in the dining-room trying to persuade herself to make up the fire for Osborn. She hated doing it; she grudged him his fire and his armchair and pipe and the comfort of those carpet slippers she saw behind the coal-box. But at last she took up the tongs, saying to herself sourly:
"It's for Marie, after all, because she asked me; not for him."
She chose her lumps of coal carefully, the two biggest, heavy enough to crush out altogether the tiny glow of the embers which remained; she battened them down and remained to assure herself that they would not burn.