nights in order to nurse you; capable of dying and seeing you die
rather than give way about the tint of a necktie; capable of laughter
and tears simultaneously; capable of never being in the wrong except for
the idle whim of so being. She had a big mouth and very wide nostrils,
and her years were thirty-five. It was no matter; it would have been no
matter had she been a hundred and thirty-five. In short....

Clara Curtenty wore tight-fitting black silk, with a long gold chain
that descended from her neck nearly to her waist, and was looped up in
the middle to an old-fashioned gold brooch. She was in mourning for a
distant relative. Black pre-eminently suited her. Consequently her
distant relatives died at frequent intervals.

The basalt clock on the mantelpiece trembled and burst into the song of
six. Clara Curtenty rose swiftly from the easy-chair, and took her seat
in front of the tea-tray. Almost at the same moment a neat
black-and-white parlourmaid brought in teapot, copper kettle, and a
silver-covered dish containing hot pikelets; then departed. Clara was
alone again; not the same Clara now, but a personage demure, prim,
precise, frightfully upright of back--a sort of impregnable
stronghold--without doubt a Deputy-Mayoress.

At five past six Josiah Curtenty entered the room, radiant from a hot
bath, and happy in dry clothes--a fine, if mature, figure of a man. His
presence filled the whole room.

'Well, my chuck!' he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

She gazed at him with a look that might mean anything. Did she raise her
cheek to his greeting, or was it fancy that she had endured, rather than