Mr. Derdon was taking his time over the arrangement of his tie. He was watching himself in the mirror that hung over his chest of drawers, but although his hands and his eyes were on his tie, his attention was downstairs in the hall, and he was listening for the sound of the front door closing, which would tell him that Mrs. Derdon had gone out of the house and that he was alone and could go downstairs without fear of her seeing him. If she was going to go off like this, go off leaving him to have his breakfast alone, she was not going to have the satisfaction of seeing him settled at the kitchen table before she left. He had his mind made up. He was not going to go downstairs until he was sure she was out of the house. Time was on his side. He could hurry over his breakfast once he got down, but she should have been out of the house and gone minutes ago. She should have walked half of the way to the church by now, if she was to be kneeling in her place before the priest ascended the altar to start the Mass. He could afford to take his time. She would get tired of standing around down there waiting for him.

At last he heard the front door close. She was gone. Within the space of the minute that followed, he had his tie right, and he had slipped into his coat, and he had put his glasses and his clean handkerchief and his change and his pen-and-pencil set and the other objects that lay through each night on top of his chest of drawers into his pockets, and he was standing at the head of the stairs that led down to their narrow hall.

It gave him a fright, to see her standing below him in the hall dressed in her outdoor clothes, wearing her gray coat and her black Sunday shoes. Her head was bent, her face shadowed by the brim of her hat, and she was looking at something in her prayer book and standing very still, so that for an instant he thought he was seeing things, but she looked up at him and closed the prayer book.

“I thought you’d gone,” he said.