"Hallo, dear!" he answered, rather stammeringly. "How are you? How are the—"
The maid took from him the overcoat which he was shedding, and his wife retreated into the sitting-room, he following.
When the door was shut, she turned, lifted her face, and murmured: "How are you, Osborn?"
He kissed her and, loth to relinquish her, kept his arm about her waist; she was unresponsive, but he did not notice that; they went together to the chesterfield drawn up before the fire and sat down. She took a corner, turning herself to face him a little, so that he had to withdraw his arm from her, and she pushed a billowing cushion which he did not remember into a comfortable position for her back.
She spoke very kindly and sympathetically, but it was with the kindness and sympathy which someone who was a stranger might show. "How well you look! I'm longing to hear all about your doings; your letters did not say very much. I should have met you at Victoria, only there's always a crush, and it's easy to miss people, so I thought I'd stay here."
"I didn't suppose you could leave the children to meet me."
"Oh, I can leave them quite well with Ann."
One of those silences which fall between people who have been estranged fell between them, during which he looked from her to the room, and all about him, and back to her, while she regarded him with that disinterested kindness.
"How nice everything looks!" he said, breaking the silence in a voice which sounded crude to himself. "What a lot of flowers you have, and all these cushions! I don't remember things, as a woman would do, but surely there's something new."
"Only the cushions. I stuffed a lot with one of mother's feather beds. She left me everything, you know."