A silver timepiece, a wedding present from His mother, who had objected to the match, struck the midnight hour. The thin sound of the last stroke, spun into tenuity by silence, died, and the clanking, hooting, nerve-shattering scurry of racing motor-buses went by like a wild hunt of iron-shackled fiends. A private car passed with its exhaust wailing like an exiled banshee, a belated hansom or two bowled along the sloppy asphalt, the raucous screech of a constable-defying nymph of the pavement rent the muggy air. He hardly heard it; he had been agreeing with his mother ever since the clock had struck. To-morrow he would go and look in at 000, Sloane Street, and tell her that she had always known best. In imagination he was telling her so, when the sable-bordered tail of a dove-colored Indian cashmere dressing gown he had worshiped during the honeymoon swept across the feuille-rose carpet in the direction of the boudoir; Sada Yacco and Abé San, snub-nosed, blue-and-pink-bowed canine causes of the conjugal quarrel, joyously yelping in its wake.
“Aren’t you going to bed?� He demanded.
“You did not seem inclined to go to your dressing-room,� She returned with point, “and as I have to write an important letter, I may as well do it now!�
He knew that the letter would be addressed to Her mother, who had also objected to the match, and would contain a daughter’s testimony to the correctness of the maternal judgment. Sada Yacco and Abé San, sitting on their haunches, with their pink tongues lolling, looked as though they knew it too. How he loathed those Japanese pugs! As he glared at them she gathered them up, one under each arm, protectingly.
“Don’t be afraid!� He said, with the kind of laugh described by the popular novelist as grating; “I am not going to murder the little brutes, after paying thirty pounds for the pair.� This was a touch of practical economy that made Her lip curl. “What I say is, I decline to have those animals galloping over me in the middle of the night.�
“It is the middle of the night now,� She said, concealing a yawn behind three fingers—his wedding ring and keeper upon one—“and they are not galloping over you. Men are supposed to be more logical than women. I have often wondered why since last May.�
“We were married in May,� He said, folding his arms after a method much in favor with the popular novelist when heroes are grim.
“It seems,� She said, rather drearily, “a long time ago.�
“If I had told you last May,� He retorted, “that I object to wake in the middle of the night with one Japanese pug snorting upon my—ah—my chest, and the other usurping the greater part of my pillow, you would have sympathized with my feeling, understood the objection, and relegated Sada Yacco and Abé San to their comfortable basket in the corner of the kitchen—or anywhere else,� he added hurriedly, seeing thievish early errand-boys on the tip of her tongue, “except your bedroom!�
The popular novelist would have described her pose as “sculpturesque,� her expression as “fateful,� and her tone as “icy,� as She said: