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said.
    “Can’t even be sure I’ll get home for lunch today,” he said sorrowfully. “Someone wants to look at the old Grainger place.”
    “Oh, Mark,” she wailed, “all day!”
    “Afraid so, darling,” he said, and got up and turned the clock back again.
    The moment of parting was agony, the moment when he had turned the corner desolate, and yet, after they were passed, life closed about her warmly in a hundred things she had to do. She darted about the house, creating cleanliness, shaping their possessions into a basis of order. And then she went into each room as though she were painting its portrait, seeing each in its whole, studying every detail, the pattern a chair made, the line of a curtain’s fall, the splash of a picture’s color, the emphasis of a flower. The house was a whole, made up of the separate perfection of every room. But the perfection was not static, it must be alive, faithfully partaking of her life and Mark’s. It must be their house, lived in by Mark and by her. She made the study a place like Mark, the long sofa where his tall body could lie, the pillows flat because he liked to lie flat when he was tired. The desk was solid and uncluttered, the pictures clear and simple. It was strange that she could see his background better than her own. She changed her own possessions every other day, sure of nothing. Did her toilet table look better here by the window, or here opposite the bed? The flowers here or there? She was dissatisfied, and pondered, trying one thing and another without being able to find what she wanted.
    Before she knew it the clock was at noon and she was guilty that the hours without him were so soon gone. He was there almost before she had missed him. She heard his voice calling from the hall.
    “They didn’t come, after all, honey! I’m home!”
    “Oh, Mark!” She flew into the kitchen and started everything at once. It was fun to see how fast she could do it all—the chops, the peas, the salad—set the table in between—put on the bowl of flowers—no artificial flowers in this house!
    “There!” she said in fifteen minutes.
    “There’s nobody like you!” He pulled out her chair.
    “Oh, nonsense!” she said. “Don’t—I don’t like you to say that.”
    “No, but look,” he said eagerly, “what have I done? Washed my hands, brushed my hair, changed my tie—I found I’d dropped something on that tie, how—”
    “I’ll see to it,” she said quickly.
    “And by the time I get downstairs, you’ve got lunch ready. Now you know there’s nobody like you!”
    She smiled and did not answer. Why, indeed, did she not like him to say there was no one like her? It made her feel lonely. She wanted to be like everybody else. But Mark was talking eagerly, happily, eating with hunger.
    “They phoned up just ten minutes before twelve that they didn’t want the Grainger place,” he was saying. “I started to ring you up, and then I thought, ‘I’ll get there as quickly as I can get her.’”
    “Why didn’t they want the Grainger place?” she asked curiously. “It’s a beautiful old house.”
    “Too far out for servants,” he said.
    “Perhaps they’d like the Marsey summer place,” she said.
    “Is it for sale?” he asked.
    “It seems to me I heard they were going to live abroad now that Mr. Marsey is dead,” she said. “I don’t know where I heard it, but—”
    “You have a memory like flypaper,” he said. “But why didn’t I think of it myself?”
    He got up and went to the telephone quickly and she waited. “The boss said, ‘Swell idea,’” he said, sitting down again. “I said, ‘My wife’s.’”
    “Oh, Mark,” she said with reproach, “it just happened I thought of it. You shouldn’t have told him.”
    “It’s all right,” he said curtly, “it also happens that I didn’t think of it.”
    She looked at him, her heart shrinking in fear. “Have I done something wrong?” she asked. “Why, Mark, you look angry