He
had a deep, wordless contempt for those of his acquaintances who dressed
on ceremonial occasions "à l'anglaise," that is, in loose lounge suits
and straw hats. *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing. It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful
passionate words of an old sea ballad rang out, full of a desolate pain
and sense of bitter loss. The sound irritated him shrewdly, and there came back to him a fragment
of conversation he had not thought of for ten years. During a discussion
held between his father and mother in this very room about their adored
only son's proposed marriage with Claire de Kergouët, his father had
said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very
musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he
heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "_Mon ami_, you cannot
expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now
admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch with
her love of music.... He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door. The song broke short with an almost cruel suddenness, and yet there
followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in." And then, as Jacques de Wissant slowly turned the handle of the door, he
saw his wife, Claire, before she saw him. He had a vision, that is, of
her as she appeared when she believed herself to be, if not alone, then
in sight of eyes that were indifferent, unwatchful. But Jacques' eyes,
which his wife's widowed sister, the frivolous Parisienne, Madeleine
Baudoin, had once unkindly compared to fishes' eyes, were now filled
with a watchful, suspicious light which gave a tragic mask to his
pallid, plain-featured face. Claire de Wissant was standing before a long, narrow mirror placed at
right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow,
dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender
figure, the figure which remained so supple, so--so girlish, in spite of
her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed
and yet beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and
sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret
tears, and in the firm, delicately modelled mouth. She was engaged in tucking up her dark, curling hair under a grey
yachting cap, and, for a few moments, she neither spoke nor looked round
to see who was standing framed in the door. But when, at last, she
turned away from the mirror and saw her husband, the colour, rushing
into her pale face, caused an unbecoming flush to cover it. "I thought it was one of the children," she said, a little breathlessly. And then she waited, assuming, or so Jacques thought, an air at once of
patience and of surprise which sharply angered him. Then her look of strain, nay, of positive illness, gave him an uneasy
twinge of discomfort. Could it be anxiety concerning her second sister,
Marie-Anne, who, married to an Italian officer, was now ill of scarlet
fever at Mantua? Two days ago Claire had begged very earnestly to be
allowed to go and nurse Marie-Anne. But he, Jacques, had refused, not
unkindly, but quite firmly. Claire's duty of course lay at Falaise, with
her husband and children; not at Mantua, with her sister. Suddenly she again broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything
you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
one instance, to follow fashion. She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
be on the defensive when speaking to her husband. Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
widow. In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
Claire's face. "I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?" She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
each winter. "To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
morning." "Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
which she had early schooled him to endure. But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
to-day--the fourteenth of August--is our wedding day! How stupid of me
to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
them----"

She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
the distance between them. But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed
with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that
Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any
passionate feeling to restrain. All he now did was to take a shagreen case out of his breast pocket and
hold it out towards her. "Claire," he said quietly, "I have brought you, in memory of our wedding
day, a little gift which I hope you will like. It is a medallion of the
children." And as she at last advanced towards him, he pressed a spring,
and revealed a dull gold medal on which, modelled in high relief, and
superposed the one on the other, were Clairette's and Jacqueline's
childish, delicately pure profiles. A softer, kindlier light came into Claire de Wissant's sad grey eyes. She held out a hesitating hand--and Jacques de Wissant, before placing
his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather
awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss
a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage.