work. His tastes were sane and simple, and his dingy, furnished rooms
had become through habit very pleasant to him. In being his own, they
were invested with a greater charm than another man's castle. Here he
had smoked and studied, here he had made many a glorious voyage into the
land of books. Many a homecoming, too, rose up before him out of the
dark ungenial streets, to a clear blazing fire, a neatly laid cloth, an
evening of ideal enjoyment; many a summer twilight when he mused at the
open window, plunging his gaze deep into the recesses of his neighbour's
lime-tree, where the unseen sparrows chattered with such unflagging
gaiety.

He had always been given to much daydreaming, and it was in the silence
of his rooms of an evening that he turned his phantasmal adventures into
stories for the magazines; here had come to him many an editorial
refusal, but here, too, he had received the news of his first unexpected
success. All his happiest memories were embalmed in those shabby,
badly-furnished rooms.

Now all was changed. Now might there be no longer any soft indulgence
of the hour's mood. His rooms and everything he owned belonged now to
Esther, too. She had objected to most of his photographs, and had
removed them. She hated books, and were he ever so ill-advised as to
open one in her presence, she immediately began to talk, no matter how
silent or how sullen her previous mood had been. If he read aloud to her
she either yawned despairingly, or was tickled into laughter where there
was no reasonable cause. At first Willoughby had tried to educate her,
and had gone hopefully to the task. It is so natural to think you may
make what you will of the woman who loves you. But Esther had no wish to
improve. She evinced all the self-satisfaction of an illiterate mind. To
her husband's gentle admonitions she replied with brevity that she