“It’s the first time I’ve been in this room,” said Bertram. He looked at the smallness of it, and the neatness. It had been Joyce’s room since she had left her nursery in the house. Some of her girlhood’s treasures and toys were there; a doll’s-house in the corner, a pair of skates hanging over a cupboard, a horse-shoe, tied up with ribbon, over the mantelpiece, photographs of herself and Alban on Shetland ponies, a pair of foils crossed on one of the walls, and a fox’s brush—her first—over the narrow wooden bed.
“I hope you won’t stay here long,” said Joyce.
She slipped off her cloak and sat in an old wicker chair by the stone-piece where a small fire had almost burnt out. She still had the look of a rebellious child—a King’s page, with curled, cropped hair.
“Joyce,” said Bertram, “have you forgotten that I’m your husband, and you’re my wife?”
“Is that what you’ve been waiting to ask me all the evening?”
She teased him with her mockery.
“By God, it is!” he said quickly. “And I want an answer.”
She answered him in the worst way.
“I wish I could forget a most unfortunate fact!”
Perhaps she didn’t mean to be quite brutal with him. It’s likely that she was just trying his temper, and yielding to her own. But it hit him hard, and he reeled under the blow, not only in a mental way, but physically.