The first person whom he saw, seated in her accustomed place at her favourite table, was his wife.

She beckoned him to come over to her.

There was a vacant chair by her side to which she pointed.
"Thank you," he said, "I won't sit down.

I don't think that I care to play just now.

You are fortunate this afternoon, I trust ?" Something in his face and tone checked that rush of altered feeling of which she had been more than once passionately conscious since the night before.
"I am hideously out of luck," she confessed slowly.