Nellie came into the dining-room two minutes after her husband.  As Edward Henry had laboriously counted these two minutes almost second by second on the dining-room clock, he was very tired of waiting.  His secret annoyance was increased by the fact that Nellie took off her white apron in the doorway and flung it hurriedly on to the table-tray which, during the progress of meals, was established outside the dining-room door.  He did not actually witness this operation of undressing, because Nellie was screened by the half-closed door; but he was entirely aware of it.  He disliked it, and he had always disliked it.  When Nellie was at work, either as a mother or as the owner of certain fine silver ornaments, he rather enjoyed the wonderful white apron, for it suited her temperament; but as the head of a household with six thousand pounds a year at its disposal, he objected to any hint of the thing at meals.  And to-night he objected to it altogether.  Who could guess from the homeliness of their family life that he was in a position to spend a hundred pounds a week and still have enough income left over to pay the salary of a town clerk or so?  Nobody could guess; and he felt that people ought to be able to guess.  When he was young he would have esteemed an income of six thousand pounds a year as necessarily implicating feudal state, valets, castles, yachts, family solicitors, racing-stables, county society, dinner-calls and a drawling London accent.  Why should his wife wear an apron at all?  But the sad truth was that neither his wife nor his mother ever looked rich, or even endeavoured to look rich.  His mother would carry an eighty-pound sealskin as though she had picked it up at a jumble sale, and his wife put such simplicity into the wearing of a hundred-and-eighty pound diamond ring that its expensiveness was generally quite wasted.

And yet, while the logical male in him scathingly condemned this feminine defect of character, his private soul was glad of it, for he well knew that he would have been considerably irked by the complexities and grandeurs of high life.  But never would he have admitted this.

Nellie’s face, as she sat down, was not limpid.  He understood naught of it.  More than twenty years had passed since they had first met—­he and a wistful little creature—­at a historic town-hall dance.  He could still see the wistful little creature in those placid and pure features, in that buxom body; but now there was a formidable, capable and experienced woman there too.  Impossible to credit that the wistful little creature was thirty-seven!  But she was!  Indeed, it was very doubtful if she would ever see thirty-eight again.  Once he had had the most romantic feelings about her.  He could recall the slim flexibility of her waist, the timorous melting invitation of her eyes.  And now ...  Such was human existence!

She sat up erect on her chair.  She did not apologize for being late.  She made no inquiry as to his neuralgia.  On the other hand, she was not cross.  She was just neutral, polite, cheerful, and apparently conscious of perfection.  He strongly desired to inform her of the exact time of day, but his lips would not articulate the words.