EVANGELINE came back from the maternity hospital in the charge of a protective, hygienic nurse with a hard, bright, pink-cheeked face and a naturally hostile and altogether too understanding eye, who seemed to enjoy saying: “You have to keep out of here, Mr Tewler. You can’t come near her for a bit. You can say ‘Good deavning’ from the door if you like. But we must take care of her still. She’s not out of her trouble yet.”

A month of enforced chastity passed and was followed by a second month. Master Henry Tewler ceased to look like a flayed monkey in the course of twenty-four hours and began to be attractive. He ceased to squint and produced real brown hair of very great fineness. He lost any personal resemblances and passed into that phase when babies can be freely exchanged and no one the wiser. He fattened under a carefully regimented bottle-feeding, for Evangeline was neither willing nor able to undertake that task. He gurgled and waved his arms about and won a smile from his mother and so became the household darling.

“He’s getting artful,” said the proud father. “Think he’s like me, nurse?”

“There’s something about the eyes,” the nurse admitted.

The nurse went at the end of the second month, and Mrs Butter, who more than anyone else was enslaved by Master Henry, insisted on becoming his nurse and protector. “It might be my own little lost mite come back to me,” she said. A new and slatternly “general” came in by the day to take over the domestic work.

Evangeline was up and about again now and cooking very competently. She was taking in the French costumes she had let out, and bringing them up to date with the help of Mode. She went for a walk round the squares, she went for a drive round Hyde Park in a cab, she went with Edward Albert to a cinema. And still there came no evening summons to Edward Albert. What did it mean?

He brought matters to a crisis. “You’re looking fine,” he said.

“I’m getting better.”

“You’re looking just right. I’d like to kiss you. . . . ”

She raised her eyebrows.

He came to the point.

“Ain’t it about time, Evadne; well — we did something?”

She had been rehearsing her part in this encounter for some time. But this opening line didn’t fit.

“We aren’t going to do something any more,” she said.

“But you’re my wife. You got to do your juty by me.”

She shook her head.

“But you got to.”

“All that’s been changed,” she said. “My body belongs to me and I do what I like with it. And as far as all that goes, I’ve done with you for ever, little man. For ever and ever and ever.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Nous verrons.”

“But — You’re mad. You’re flying in the face of the laws of Gord and man. You can’t mean it. No. And what are you going to do? Go without — You can’t stand that any more than I can. Less. Don’t talk rubbish. Why, you’re obliged to.”

“Nothing like trying,” she said.

“But you’re obliged every way. It’s against the law. I could sue you. There’s such a thing as Restitution of Connubial Rights. I’ve seen it in Lloyd’s News. Only the other day. . . . ”

“And what can that do for you, Mr Tewler? Aren’t you having your connubial rights now? Don’t I keep house for you, cook for you, cohabit as they say? But my body is my own, I tell you. My body is my own. Do you think the law can send a couple of policemen in here, to assist you in your — operations — overwhelm me and see that everything goes off satisfactorily? Do you imagine that?”

The word “policeman” had given him an Idea. “I’ll — I’ll write to your father. He won’t stand for this?”

“It’ll be a lovely letter, Teddy,” she mocked. “Will you show it to me?”

“You don’t mean all this,” he said. “This is one of your silly moods. I’ve ‘ad to wait. I suppose I’ll ‘ave to wait a bit more. But I’ve got to know you pretty well by now, my lady. You’ll come round. Don’t keep me too long. I warn you I may be unfaithful to you.”

Her face betrayed the obvious repartee she checked unspoken. “............