The cutlery reposed in a green-lined basket.  She had doffed the apron and hung it behind the scullery door.  With all the delicious curves of her figure newly revealed, she was reaching the alarm-clock down from the mantelpiece, and then she was winding it up.  The ratchet of the wheel clacked, and the hurried ticking was loud.  In the grate of the range burned one spot of gloomy red.

“Your bedtime, I suppose?” he murmured, rising elegantly.

She smiled.  She said—­

“Shall you lock up, or shall I?”

“Oh!  I think I know all the tricks,” he replied, and thought, “She’s a pretty direct sort of girl, anyway!”

IV

About an hour later he went up to his room.  It was a fact that everything had been made right for him.  The gas burned low.  He raised it, and it shone directly upon the washstand, which glittered with the ivory glaze of large earthenware, and the whiteness of towels that displayed all the creases of their folding.  There was a new cake of soap in the ample soap-dish, and a new tooth-brush in a sheath of transparent paper lay on the marble.  “Rather complete this!” he reflected.  The nail-brush—­an article in which he specialized—­was worn, but it was worn evenly and had cost good money.  The water-bottle dazzled him; its polished clarity was truly crystalline.  He could not remember ever having seen a toilet array so shining with strict cleanness.  Indeed, it was probable that he had never set eyes on an absolutely clean water-bottle before; the qualities associated with water-bottles in his memory were semi-opacity and spottiness.

The dressing-table matched the washstand.  A carriage clock in leather had been placed on the mantelpiece.  In front of the mantelpiece was an old embroidered fire-screen.  Peeping between the screen and the grate, he saw that a fire had been scientifically laid, ready for lighting; but some bits of paper and oddments on the top of the coal showed that it was not freshly laid.  The grate had a hob at one side, and on this was a small, bright tin kettle.  The bed was clearly a good bed, resilient, softly garnished.  On it was stretched a long, striped garment of flannel, with old-fashioned pearl buttons at neck and sleeves.  An honest garment, quite surely unshrinkable!  No doubt in the sixties, long before the mind of man had leaped to the fine perverse conception of the decorated pyjama, this garment had enjoyed the fullest correctness.  Now, after perhaps forty years in the cupboards of Mrs. Maldon, it seemed to recall the more excellent attributes of an already forgotten past, and to rebuke what was degenerate in the present.

Louis, ranging over his experiences in the disorderly and mean pretentiousness of the suburban home, and in the discomfort of various lodgings, appreciated the grave, comfortable benignity of that bedroom.  Its appeal to his senses was so strong that it became for him almost luxurious.  The bedroom at his latest lodgings was full of boot-trees and trouser-stretchers and coat-holders, but it was a paltry thing and a grimy.  He saw the daily and hourly advantages of marriage with a loving, simple woman whose house was her pride.  He had a longing for solidities, certitudes, and righteousness.