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THREE:He was always punctual at his office; lately he had been before his time there, and had begun to open letters before Norah arrived. This happened next morning, and among others that he had laid on his desk was Lord Inverbroom��s acknowledgment of his notice to terminate the County Club��s lease. Norah, when she came, finished this business for him, and in due course handed him the completed pile. Then, as usual, she took her place opposite him for the dictation of answers. She wore at her breast a couple of daffodils, and he noticed that, as she breathed, the faint yellow reflection they cast on her chin stirred upwards and downwards. No word had passed between them since she had{293} expressed regret for what he considered her impertinence the day before, and this morning she did not once meet his eye. Probably she considered herself in disgrace, and it maddened him to see her quiet acceptance of it, which struck him as contemptuous. She was like some noble slave, working, because she must work, for a master she despised. Well, if that was her attitude, so be it. She might despise, but he was master. At his request she read out a letter she had just taken down. In the middle he stopped her.That intense vividness of perception that had been lit within him when, half an hour ago, the clock on his chimney-piece chimed, still blazed.{302} He noticed a hundred minute details in the room, his ear separated the hum of the street below into its component ingredients: there was a boy whistling, there was a motor standing with its engines still working, there was a street-cry concerning daffodils, another concerning evening papers. Memory was similarly awake: he remembered that his wife was giving a little dinner-party this evening, that Silverdale, who was setting out on his mission to the docks next day, was to be among the guests, and that Alice expected that the slippers of Maltese crosses would be back from being made up, in time for him to take them with him. He recalled, out of the well of years, how in the early days of his married life Emmeline had made him a pair of slippers which did not fit, and in the same breath remembered the exact look of her face this very morning when a message had come from her cook saying that she could not get a bit of salmon anywhere. And as each impression registered itself on eye and ear and memory, he hated it. But nothing concerning Norah came into his mind: sometimes for a moment a blank floated across it, behind which perhaps was Norah, but she produced no image on it. He could not even recollect her face: he did not know what she was like. There was the horror of it all: everything in the world but she had the vividness of nightmare, and she, the only thing that did not belong to nightmare, had gone from him.{303} To Be Made For New Orders