Her ill-humour returned, and she regretted the bonnet—an additional grievance.
“If it wasn’t for him I’m blessed if I’d ever come near you,” said Emily in the discussion that followed.
And so it happened that when Goddard came home he found his wife in a fit of sulks. The experiment of a domestic evening failed, as it had done so many times before. She replied monosyllabically to his attempts at conversation, refused point-blank his offer to put her into a cab and drive her to a theatre—a wild delight of past years—and retired to bed at nine o’clock.
Goddard mounted to his own den, and plunged into his work with the zest of a man who has conscientiously acquitted himself of an irksome duty, and is free to apply himself without scruple to more congenial occupations.
CHAPTER VI—THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES
It was the Tuesday luncheon-hour. The diningroom of the political club was thronged with hungry councillors from Spring Gardens, and politicians to whom the weekly meetings of the Council were a matter of concern. The air buzzed with eager talk. There was a continual going to and fro between the tables—greetings, handshakes, hurried conversations between lunchers and passers-by. Elation over an important measure successfully carried through was the prevailing tone, encouraging grandiose imaginings. London was to have its hanging-gardens, like Babylon of old, and the streams that water the New Jerusalem would take a lesson in limpidness from the Thames.
Goddard sat at a table with three others, who were thus forecasting the municipal millennium. He listened with a smile. Had he not just pricked the visionaries with kindly satire in his review article on Extremism?
“And all ad majorent L. C. C. gloriam,” said he. “That way madness lies.”