It was two o’clock and then it was past two. When Mrs. Bagot sat down and began watching the clock, she said to herself that when the hands marked two she would get up and find some little job to occupy her — something she could leave at a minute’s notice. But two o’clock came and then one minute past two, and on, and still she sat, calmly doing nothing. That big clock was most dependable. It always kept perfect time. All the other clocks in the house were set by it, and it had ruled Mrs. Bagot’s days and nights during all of her married life. Through the years she had watched it; she had looked at it in anxiety, excitement, apprehension, satisfaction, relief, and anticipation, and in disappointment, and in annoyance, and now she simply sat and looked at it as though she dared it to tell her to stand up and do something. But the clock, which had been so domineering all these years, had no power over her today, and as one wasted minute after another turned and vanished before her eyes she began to smile. She did not know she was giving the clock the same smile she used to give the children when they were babies and slept past their time and she smiled at them as though to say, “Sleep on, you will be awake soon enough.” It was a secret smile, amused, absent, and speculative. When Mrs. Bagot smiled like that her eyes reflected something she did not know about herself. She was in touch then with a spirit she did not know she possessed, and when she smiled, her face was lighted by the faint and faraway glimmer of an assurance that was truly hers, but truly buried, buried deep down under the sound, useful earth of her thirty-five years of unquestioning, obedient life. She thought the clock was beginning to look quite friendly, and she also thought it had calmed down and was taking its time, just as she was.