A tenancy of five years, with long absences, enabled him to regard this niche in a characterless suburb as in some sort his home; a familiar smell of books and tobacco welcomed him as he opened the door; remnants of a good fire kept the air warm, and dispersed a pleasant glow. On shelves which almost concealed the walls, stood a respectable collection of volumes, the lowest tier consisting largely of what second-hand booksellers, when invited to purchase, are wont to call ‘tomb-stones’ – that is to say, old folios, of no great market value, though good brains and infinite labour went to the making of them. A great table, at one end of which was a tray with glasses and a water-bottle, occupied the middle of the floor; nearer the fireplace was a small writing-desk. For pictures little space could be found; but over the mantelpiece hung a fine watercolour, the flood of Tigris and the roofs of Bagdad burning in golden sunset. Harvey had bought it at the gallery in Pall Mall not long ago; the work of a man of whom he knew nothing; it represented the farthest point of his own travels, and touched profoundly his vague historico-poetic sensibilities.

Three letters lay on the desk. As soon as he had lit his lamp, and exchanged his boots for slippers, he looked at the envelopes, and chose one addressed in a woman’s hand. The writer was Mrs Bennet Frothingham.

‘We have only just heard, from Mrs Carnaby, that you are back in town. Could you spare us tomorrow evening? It would be so nice of you. The quartet will give Beethoven’s F minor,7 and Alma says it will be well done – the conceit of the child! We hope to have some interesting people. What a shocking affair of poor Mrs Carnaby’s! I never knew anything quite so bad. – Our united kind regards.’

Harvey thrust out his lips, in an ambiguous expression, as he threw the sheet aside. He mused before opening the next letter. This proved to be of startling contents: a few lines scribbled informally, undated, without signature. A glance at the postmark discovered ‘Liverpool’.

‘The children are at my last address – you know it. I can do no more for them. If the shabby Abbotts refuse – as I dare say they will – it wouldn’t hurt you to keep them from the workhouse. But it’s a devilish hard world, and they must take their chance.’

After a stare and a frown, Harvey woke the echoes with boisterous laughter. It was long since any passage in writing had so irresistibly tickled his sense of humour. Well, he must let Abbott know of this. It might be as well, perhaps, if he called on Mrs Abbott tomorrow, to remove any doubt that might remain in her mind. The fellow Wager being an old acquaintance of his, he could not get rid of a sense of far-off responsibility in this matter; though, happily, Wager’s meeting with Mrs Abbott’s cousin, which led to marriage and misery, came about quite independently of him.

The last letter he opened without curiosity, but with quiet interest and pleasure. It was dated from Greystone; the writer, Basil Morton, had a place in his earliest memories, for, as neighbours’ children, they had played together long before the grammar school days which allied him with Hugh Carnaby.

‘For aught I know,’ began Morton, ‘you may at this moment be drifting on the Euphrates, or pondering on the site of Alexandreia Eschate.8 It is you who owe me an account of yourself; nevertheless, I am prompted to write, if only to tell you that I have just got the complete set of the Byzantine Historians.9 A catalogue tempted me, and I did buy.’

And so on in the same strain, until, in speaking of nearer matters, his style grew simpler.

‘Our elder boy begins to put me in a difficulty. As I told you, he has been brought up on the most orthodox lines of Anglicanism; his mother – best of mothers and best of wives, but in this respect atavistic – has had a free hand, and I don’t see how it could have been otherwise. But now the lad begins to ask awkward questions, and to put me in a corner; the young rascal is a vigorous dialectician and rationalist – odd result of such training. It becomes a serious question how I am to behave. I cannot bear to distress his mother, yet how can I tell him that I literally believe those quaint old fables? Solvetur vivendo,10 of course, like everything else, but just now it worries me a little. Generally I can see a pretty clear line of duty; here the duty is divided, with a vengeance. Have you any counsel?’

Harvey Rolfe mumbled impatiently; all domestic matters were a trial to his nerves. It seemed to him an act of unaccountable folly to marry a woman from whom one differed diametrically on subjects that lay at the root of life; and of children he could hardly bring himself to think at all, so exasperating the complication they introduced into social problems which defied common sense. He disliked children; fled the sight and the sound of them in most cases, and, when this was not possible, regarded them with apprehension, anxiety, weariness, anything but interest.