the one overwhelming idea that concerned him. The first shadow had fallen;
their record of complete and perfect happiness was broken.

The road to the station was a long and particularly beautiful one. Hereward
had always appreciated every inch of it. But to-day he hated it. He hated
the way the yew-trees drooped, the leafless branches of the hazels, the
faded, crumpled blackberry, the scattered decaying leaves. It was really a
remarkable day for November--clear and frosty, with a bright blue sky and
scudding white clouds. A strong north-east wind tested one's vitality.
Hereward's was low. He buttoned his collar and hurried on.

Mary had never treated him quite like this before. She had always been
tender, sympathetic and understanding with his moods. True, he was trying;
but she had known that before she married him. He was an artist, and an
artist's work, he argued, depended largely on the state of his emotions. He
earned the family bread by the labour of his hands and his hand was the
servant of his mind, and his mind a tempest of moods. Mary had applied
herself to her task with creditable skill. She could always turn his
sullenness to a sort of creative melancholy of which he was rather proud;
his restlessness to energy and his discontent to something like
constructive thinking. How she achieved the miracle he did not know, nor
did he inquire. But he was guided by her as a child by its mother, still
constantly rebelling.

But to-day the machinery had broken down. Mary had been cool, pleasant and
crisply unemotional at breakfast-time. He had woken up cross and with a
headache. He had a muddled feeling and wanted sorting out. But Mary seemed
quite unaware of it. She had a preoccupied manner; she went about just too
cheerfully, chatting just too pleasantly about trivial things. It was
mechanical, Hereward decided, and, anyway, it wasn't at all what he wanted.