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nothing more, straight, still, and serious, and with brass knobs on the end of it. It was meant to be slept in, Harkaway perceived and prepared to sleep. Mrs. Harkaway had no notion of sleeping.
    “I feel very talkative,” she said.
    “Well I don’t,” said Harkaway.
    “You never do,” said she.
    There was no reply.
    “Talk to me,” she pleaded. “Say something to me.”
    “Oh dear,” sighed Harkaway, “What shall I tell you?”
    “Tell me what you think.”
    “Oh, my God!” thought Harkaway, as though his soul were slipping out of his body. Then aloud, “I don’t think anything.”
    There was a long silence and Harkaway was nearly dozing when his wife began again: “Did you see Mrs. Feathers this morning?”
    Harkaway grunted. He couldn’t remember. What was the importance of Mrs. Feathers? Sleep was the most important thing. And “What did old Mr. Dukes say?”
    “Oh nothing. Only about his dogs,” grunted Harkaway.
    “Lovely boys. I wish we had a dog,” persisted Mrs. Harkaway. “And Mr. Radfield,” she went on, “has he paid his rent yet?”
    That touched John Harkaway on a serious matter. He opened his eyes.
    “No,” he said. “It’s a bad look out for him. He hasn’t.”
    “Poor man,” she said.
    “Poor man!” exclaimed Harkaway slightly annoyed. “I like that. He’ll be poor if we sell him up.” To call dogs “lovely boys,” and an old scoundrel like Radfield “a poor man”!
    “You’re not going to do that?” exclaimed Mrs. Harkaway rebelliously. “He can’t help it. It isn’t a crime.”
    “I’m not so sure,” returned Harkaway loftily, putting his chin over the top of the sheet. For, to a rent collector, it is a crime not to pay your rent. It is a blow at the roots of society. “I say I’m not so sure. It’s stealing, when you think it out. It’s taking what isn’t yours.”
    “How can you say so,” exclaimed Mrs. Harkaway, hot in the defence, for she knew that Harkaway rebuked her in a general way when rebuking others in a particular one.
    “Supposing I took all my takings every month,” he said derisively at the ceiling, but intending it for her.
    “Well,” she tossed out the word. “Suppose you did.”
    For lying in the dark with the wall between them and the door pleasantly open every mocking sentence was like a dip of the paddle which shot her boat wildly forward, more sharply every time into the mists and uncertainties of a quarrel which could, after all, be stopped in a moment.
    “And land me in gaol and you in the workhouse,” he said. “A fine lookout.”
    “Well,” she said giving a final reckless push to the argument. “What of it? What about it? We’re not like that poor Mrs. Radfield. We haven’t any children.”
    That was the sore point and yet she played like this with it.
    “No, thank God,” said Harkaway with painful bitterness, but he did not mean that at all. At the word “children,” his thoughts froze him and then his heart galloped like horses, his blood rushed back in a swirl as though his limbs were filled with the roll of drums, rousing him and waking him to pain. There was a fiery anvil in his breast. No children. This perversity and playfulness in his house, but no children! Why did he live adding little bits of charm and persuasiveness to his manners; “Good morning to you, Mrs. Feathers,” and “A very good day to you, Mr. Radfield,” only to have Radfield slamming the door in his face and others treating him like a licensed burglar. Was there nothing serious, understanding and purposeful in the world? Was he wasting the pride of his strength as he sang down the hills on his bicycle with his bowler hat over his eyes; and was there no reward for the sense of moral endeavour which filled him as he got off his machine and, with greater pride because it was difficult, pushed it slowly up the steeper hills? And all the time, when he knocked at a door, schooling himself to pretend that the last thing he had in him