That was an odd thought, that everyday existence need be dull. There was no doubt the last twenty years of his own life had been dull, but during that morning life had not been so. It seemed to him he had never before had such a morning.

It was a strange and terrible fact, but the truth was he had never thought much about his daughter, and here she was almost a woman. There was no doubt she already had the body of a woman. The functions of womanhood went on in her body. He sat, looking directly at her. A moment before he had been very weary, now the weariness was quite gone. "She might already have had a child," he thought. Her body was prepared for child-bearing, it had grown and developed to that estate. What an immature face she had. Her mouth was pretty but there was something, a kind of blankness. Her face was like a fair sheet of paper on which nothing had been written. Her eyes in wandering about met his eyes. It was odd. Something like fright came into them. She sat quickly up. "What's the matter with you, Dad?" she asked sharply. He smiled. "There isn't anything the matter," he said, looking away. "I thought I'd come home to lunch. Is there anything wrong about that?"

*

His wife, Mary Webster, came to the back door of the house am called her daughter. When she saw her husband her eyebrows went up. "This is unexpected. What brought you home at this time of the day?" she asked.

They went into the house and along a hallway to the dining-room, but there was no place set for him. He had the feeling they both thought t lie re was something wrong, almost immoral, about his being home at that time of the day. It was unexpected and the unexpected had a doubtful air. He concluded he had better explain. "I had a headache and thought I would come home and lie down for an hour," he said. He felt they looked relieved, as though he had taken a load off their minds, and smiled at the thought. "May I have a cup of tea? Will it be too much trouble?" he asked.

While the tea was being brought he pretended to look out at a window, but in secret studied his wife's face. She was like her daughter. There was nothing written on her face. Her body was getting heavy.

She had been a tall slender girl with yellow hair when he married her. Now the impression she gave off was of one who had grown large without purpose, "somewhat as cattle are fattened for slaughter," he thought. One did not feel the bone and muscle back of her bulk. Her yellow hair that, when she was younger, had a way of glistening strangely in the sunlight was now rather colourless. It had the air of being dead at the roots and there were folds of quite meaningless flesh on the face among which little streams of wrinkles wandered.