“Come,” he said, “let’s begin.  What do you want moved first?  And where?”

She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner.  He was delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be able to gratify it by his own exertions.  He took off his coat and waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work.  For an hour he laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.

When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the windows, and surveyed the scene.  Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s all altered.  There isn’t a blessed thing, not a chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn’t in some place where it wasn’t.  And the room doesn’t look a bit better, and you won’t be a bit better pleased with it to-morrow.”

He put on his coat and sat down beside her.  “See here,” said he, “you don’t want me really to believe that that’s where the trouble is?”

“The trouble?”

“Yes, Nancy, the trouble.  Do you think I’m such a fool that I don’t see it?  It’s been coming on a long time.  I know you’re not happy.  You’re not satisfied with things as they are.  As they are, you know, there’s a sort of incompleteness, something wanting, isn’t there?”

She sighed.  “It’s you who are putting it that way, not I.”

“Of course I’m putting it that way.  How am I to put it any other way?  Let me think now—­well—­of course I know perfectly well that it’s not a piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do.  We want the same thing, sweetheart.”

She smiled sadly.  “Do we?  I should have said the trouble is that we don’t want the same thing, and never did.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Nor I you.  You think I’m always wanting something.  What is it that you think I want?”

“Well—­do you remember Westleydale?”

She drew back.  “Westleydale?  What has put that into your head?”

He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme.  “Well, that jolly baby we saw there—­in the wood—­you looked so happy when you grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps—­”

“There’s no use talking about that,” said she.  “I don’t like it.”

“All right—­only—­it’s still a little soon, you know, isn’t it, to give it up?”

“You’re quite mistaken,” she said coldly.  “It isn’t that.  It never has been.  If I want anything, Walter, that you haven’t given me, it’s something that you cannot give me.  I’ve long ago made up my mind to that.”

“But why make up your mind to anything?  How do you know I can’t give it you—­whatever it is—­if you won’t tell me anything about it?  What do you want, dear?”