He left the room, returned, and once more filled his glass.

A lady now entered, pale of face and dark of eye--his wife.

The husband crossed the stage, and stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume.

He spoke: "Come in, and shut the door." Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed in a restaurant.

He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman and the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white, emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with yellow flowers.