“I had to come back. I forgot something,” she said, and he continued on down the stairs and turned sharply at the foot and went straight down the three steps that led to the kitchen. She followed him. Of course, he knew very well what had happened. Trust her. Each of them had tried to play a trick on the other, and she had won. She had known all the last ten minutes what he was up to, delaying up there. She wouldn’t call up to him, or come up, as another woman would have done. She would have called that “bothering” him. Doing the direct thing was “bothering” him. For some reason, she had been just as determined to see him as he had been not to see her.

“I suppose you know you’re going to be late for Mass,” he said, and he took the teapot off the stove and brought it to the table and sat down and reached for a piece of bread.

“I’ve left everything ready,” she said.

She was standing uncertainly in the doorway. She even had her gloves on. In a minute she would have the gloves off and be fussing around putting more things on the table and asking him did he want anything.

“Are you going to Mass or not?” he said.

“Hubert,” she said. “I thought of something very funny this morning. Do you know, I’m exactly the same age today that my mother was the day I was married.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Hubert said.

“Two days from today I’ll be fifty-three, and it was two days before my mother’s fifty-third birthday that I was married.”

“I was married that day, too, you know,” Hubert said. “She seemed a lot older than fifty-three,” he added.

She hesitated, looking at his face, and at the table, and at his face again.

“Well, I just thought I’d tell you,” she said. “It seems funny, when you think of it. I’m going now. Don’t forget to give the front door a good bang. Be sure it shuts itself.”

“All right, all right, all right,” he said, but he heard the front door close, banging this time, and he didn’t know whether or not she had heard him.

She had heard his voice, but not his words. She was satisfied. She had wanted to see him, and she had seen him. She didn’t like to have to go off and leave him in the house by himself.