She smiled honestly, kindly, but piercingly.

What could he say?  What would you have said, you being a man?  It is easy, sitting there in your chair, with no Mrs. Alice Challice in front of you, to invent diplomatic replies; but conceive yourself in Priam’s place!  Besides, he did think she would suit him.  And most positively he could not bear the prospect of seeing her pass out of his life.  He had been through that experience once, when his hat blew off in the Tube; and he did not wish to repeat it.

“Of course you’ve got no home!” she said reflectively, with such compassion.  “Suppose you come down and just have a little peep at mine?”

So that evening, a suitably paired couple chanced into the fishmonger’s at the corner of Werter Road, and bought a bit of sole.  At the newspaper shop next door but one, placards said:  “Impressive Scenes at Westminster Abbey,” “Farll funeral, stately pageant,” “Great painter laid to rest,” etc.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

A Putney Morning

Except that there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as though he had died and gone to heaven.  Heaven is the absence of worry and of ambition.  Heaven is where you want nothing you haven’t got.  Heaven is finality.  And this was finality.  On the September morning, after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much admired), he opened the window wider and surveyed that part of the universe which was comprised in Werter Road and the sky above.  A sturdy old woman was coming down the street with a great basket of assorted flowers; he took an immense pleasure in the sight of the old woman; the sight of the old woman thrilled him.  Why?  Well, there was no reason, except that she was vigorously alive, a part of the magnificent earth.  All life gave him joy; all life was beautiful to him.  He had his warm bath; the bath-room was not of the latest convenience, but Alice could have made a four-wheeler convenient.  As he passed to and fro on the first-floor he heard the calm, efficient activities below stairs.  She was busy in the mornings; her eyes would seem to say to him, “Now, between my uprising and lunch-time please don’t depend on me for intellectual or moral support.  I am on the spot, but I am also at the wheel and must not be disturbed.”

Then he descended, fresh as a boy, although the promontory which prevented a direct vision of his toes showed accretions.  The front-room was a shrine for his breakfast.  She served it herself, in her-white apron, promptly on his arrival!  Eggs!  Toast!  Coffee!  It was nothing, that breakfast; and yet it was everything.  No breakfast could have been better.  He had probably eaten about fifteen thousand hotel breakfasts before Alice taught him what a real breakfast was.  After serving it she lingered for a moment, and then handed him the Daily Telegraph, which had been lying on a chair.