The Truants. A. E. W. Mason

where the heavy footsteps of a man treading up and down the room above sounded measured and unceasing.

      Tony lifted a corner of the blind and looked out.

      "There's a party next door," he said, "there was another at Lady Millingham's last night. You should have been at both, Millie, and you were at neither. Upon my word, it's rough."

      He dropped the blind and came over to her side. He knew quite well what parties and entertainments meant to her. She loved them, and it seemed to him natural and right that she should. Light, admiration, laughter and gaiety, and fine frocks--these things she was born to enjoy, and he himself had in the old days taken a great pride in watching her enjoyment. But it was not merely the feeling that she had been stripped of what was her due through him which troubled him to-night. Other and deeper thoughts were vaguely stirring in his mind.

      "We have quarrelled again to-night, Millie," he continued remorsefully. "Here we are cooped up together with just ourselves to rely upon to pull through these bad years, and we have quarrelled again."

      Millie shrugged her shoulders.

      "How did it begin?" he asked. "Upon my word I don't remember. Oh yes, I----" and Millie interrupted him.

      "What does it matter, Tony, how the quarrel began? It did begin, and another will begin to-morrow. We can't help ourselves, and you have given the reason. Here we are cooped up by ourselves with nothing else to do."

      Tony pulled thoughtfully at his moustache.

      "And we swore off quarrelling, too. When was that?"

      "Yesterday."

      "Yesterday!" exclaimed Tony, with a start of surprise. "By George, so it was. Only yesterday."

      Millie looked up at him, and the trouble upon his face brought a smile to hers. She laid a hand upon his arm.

      "It's no use swearing off, Tony," she said. "We are both of us living all the time in a state of exasperation. I just--tingle with it, there's no other word. And the least, smallest thing which goes wrong sets us quarrelling. I don't think either of us is to blame. The house alone gets on our nerves, doesn't it? These great empty, silent, dingy rooms, with their tarnished furniture. Oh! they are horrible! I wander through them sometimes and it always seems to me that, a long time ago, people lived here who suddenly felt one morning that they couldn't stand it for a single moment longer, and ran out and locked the street door behind them; and I have almost done it myself. The very sunlight comes through the windows timidly, as if it knew it had no right here at all."

      She leaned back in her chair, looking at Tony with eyes that were hopeless and almost haggard. As Tony listened to her outburst the remorse deepened on his face.

      "If I could have foreseen all this, I would have spared you it, Millie," he said. "I would, upon my word." He drew up a chair to the table, and, sitting down, said in a more cheerful voice, "Let's talk it over, and see if we can't find a remedy."

      Millie shook her head.

      "We talked it over yesterday."

      "Yes, so we did."

      "And quarrelled an hour after we had talked it over."

      "We did that too," Tony agreed, despondently. His little spark of hopefulness was put out and he sat in silence. His wife, too, did not speak, and in a short while it occurred to him that the silence was more complete than it had been a few minutes ago. It seemed that a noise had ceased, and a noise which, unnoticed before, had become noticeable by its cessation. He looked up to the ceiling. The heavy footsteps no longer dragged upon the floor overhead. Tony sprang up.

      "There! He is in bed," he exclaimed. "Shall we go out?"

      "Not to-night," replied Millie.

      He could make no proposal that night which was welcomed, and as he walked over to the mantelshelf and filled his pipe, there was something in his attitude and bearing which showed to Millie that the quick rebuff had hurt.

      "I can't pretend to-night, Tony, and that's the truth," she added in a kinder voice. "For, after all, I do only pretend nowadays that I find the Savoy amusing."

      Tony turned slowly round with the lighted match in his hand and stared at his wife. He was a man slow in thought, and when his thoughts compelled expression, laborious in words. The deeper thoughts which had begun of late to take shape in his mind stirred again at her words.

      "You have owned it," he said.

      "It had been pretence with you too, then?" she asked, looking up in surprise.

      Tony puffed at his pipe.

      "Of late, yes," he replied. "Perhaps chiefly since I saw that you were pretending."

      He came back to her side and looked for a long time steadily at her while he thought. It was a surprise to Millie that he had noticed her pretence, as much of a surprise as that he had been pretending too. For she knew him to be at once slow to notice any change in others and quick to betray it in himself. But she was not aware how wide a place she filled in all his thoughts, partly because her own nature with its facile emotions made her unable to conceive a devotion which was engrossing, and partly because Tony himself had no aptitude for expressing such a devotion, and indeed would have shrunk from its expression had the aptitude been his. But she did fill that wide place. Very slowly he had begun to watch her, very slowly and dimly certain convictions were taking shape, very gradually he was drawing nearer and nearer to a knowledge that a great risk must be taken and a great sacrifice made partly by him, partly too by her. Some part of his trouble he now spoke to her.

      "It wasn't pretence a year ago, Millie," he said wistfully. "That's what bothers me. We enjoyed slipping away quietly when the house was quiet, and snatching some of the light, some of the laughter the others have any time they want it. It made up for the days, it was fun then, Millie, wasn't it? Upon my word, I believe we enjoyed our life, yes, even this life, a year ago. Do you remember how we used to drive home, laughing over what we had seen, talking about the few people we had spoken to? It wasn't until we had turned the latch-key in the door, and crept into the hall----"

      "And passed the library door," Millie interrupted, with a little shiver.

      Tony Stretton stopped for a moment. Then he resumed in a lower voice, "Yes, it wasn't until we had passed the library door that the gloom settled down again. But now the fun's all over, at the latest when the lights go down in the supper room, and often before we have got to them at all. We were happy last year"--and he shook her affectionately by the arm--"that's what bothers me."

      His wife responded to the gentleness of his voice and action.

      "Never mind, Tony," she said. "Some day we shall look back on all of it--this house and the empty rooms and the quarrels"--she hesitated for a second--"Yes, and the library door; we shall look back on it all and laugh."

      "Shall we?" said Tony, suddenly. His face was most serious, his voice most doubtful.

      "Why, what do you mean?" asked Millie. Then she added reassuringly, "It must end some time. Oh yes, it can't last for ever."

      "No," replied Tony; "but it can last just long enough."

      "Long enough for what?"

      "Long enough to spoil both our lives altogether."

      He was speaking with a manner which was quite strange to her. There was a certainty in his voice, there was a gravity too. He had ceased to leave the remedy of their plight to time and chance, since, through two years, time and chance had failed them. He had been seriously thinking, and as the result of thought he had come to definite conclusions. Millie understood that there was much more behind the words he had spoken and that he meant to say that much more to her to-night. She was suddenly aware that she was face to face with issues momentous to both of them. She began to be a little afraid. She looked at Tony almost as if he were a stranger.

      "Tony," she said faintly, in deprecation.

      "We must face it, Millie," he went on steadily. "This