When Mrs. Bagot had collected the flowers she wanted, she took them into the kitchen and began to arrange them in a small green bowl. Then she changed her mind. She went up to the dining room, to the glass-fronted cabinet there, and got a cut-glass bowl, a treasure of hers. She took the bowl to the kitchen and started all over again, arranging the flowers quite differently. The glass bowl was particularly well suited to the flowers, and she carried it upstairs proudly and set it on the desk by Martin’s window. He got home from work very late, long after they were all asleep, and he would be surprised when he put on the light and saw the flowers waiting for him there beside his books. She was used to his coming home late. He didn’t want to disturb her or the children, and then he didn’t want to be disturbed by them in the morning when they all got up. It had seemed natural enough at the start, when he first said he’d like to be able to lie down in the little room when he came in very late, and she remembered the pleasure it had given her to arrange the room for him and put some of his shirts and things in here to make it more convenient for him. Now he was beginning to collect his books in here. And yet she was certain that at the beginning he had not known any more than she had that he would prefer this room to the big front room where she slept, or that what he really wanted was to be alone. She was certain now that if she had raised some objection at the beginning he would have thought no more about the little room. Or if the little room had never existed, he would never have had the idea of shutting himself away from her. What an alarming truth it was that if they had had a smaller house they might have been happier. And yet, the house was quite small.