“Couldn’t wake you,” he murmured lightly.  It was part of his Five Towns upbringing to conceal excitement.  “Saw you through the window.”

“Oh!  George!  Was I asleep?”

Pleasure shone on her face.  He deposited his stick and sprang to her.  He sat on the arm of the chair.  He bent her head back and examined her face.  He sat on her knee and held her.  She did not kiss; she was kissed; he liked that.  Her fatigue was adorable.

“I came here for something, and I just sat down for a second because I was so tired, and I must have gone right off....  No!  No!”

The admonishing negative was to stop him from getting up off her knee.  She was exhausted, yet she had vast resources of strength to bear him on her knee.  She was wearing her oldest frock.  It was shabby.  But it exquisitely suited her then.  It was the frock of her capability, of her great labours, of her vigil, of her fatigue.  It covered, but did not hide, her beautiful contours.  He thought she was marvellously beautiful—­and very young, far younger than himself.  As for him, he was the dandy, in striking contrast to her.  His dandyism as he sat on her knee pleased both of them.  He looked older than his years, his shoulders had broadened, his dark moustache thickened.  In his own view he was utterly adult, as she was in hers.  But their young faces so close together, so confident, were touchingly immature.  As he observed her grave satisfaction at his presence, the comfort which he gave her, he felt sure of her, and the memory of his just resentment came to him, and he was tenderly reproachful.

“I expected to hear from you,” he said.  The male in him relished the delicate accusation of his tone.

Marguerite answered with a little startled intake of breath: 

“She’s dead!”

“Dead?”

“She died this afternoon.  The layer-out left about half an hour ago.”

Death parted them.  He rose from her knee, and Marguerite did not try to prevent him.  He was profoundly shocked.  With desolating vividness he recalled the Sunday afternoon when he had carried upstairs the plump, living woman now dead.  He had always liked Mrs. Lob—­it was as Mrs. Lob that he thought of her.  He had seen not much of her.  Only on that Sunday afternoon had he and she reached a sort of intimacy—­unspoken but real.  He had liked her.  He had even admired her.  She was no ordinary being.  And he had sympathized with her for Marguerite’s quite explicable defection.  He had often wished that those two, the charwoman and his beloved, could somehow have been brought together.  The menaces of death had brought them together.  Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom which he had once entered.  Mrs. Lob had been dying while he dined richly with Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, and while he talked cynically with Everard Lucas.  And while he had been resenting Marguerite’s neglect Marguerite was watching by the dying bed.  Oh!  The despicable superficialities of restaurants and clubs!  He was ashamed.  The mere receding shadow of death shamed him.