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Hardly more than a minute later Marble came tiptoeing back down the stairs and into the room, the glass still in his hand.

‘False alarm,’ he said. ‘One gets used to these things when one is the father of a family.’

He turned again to the siphon, and it hissed into the tumblers. Then he passed Medland’s across to him. As he took it the wind outside howled again louder than ever; the windows rattled and they heard the rain pelting against the glass.

‘What a night,’ said Medland.

‘Drink up,’ replied Marble, very, very calmly.

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When Annie Marble woke in the early morning she was oppressed with a headache—a real headache, this time. She had had a restless night, although, true to his word, astonishingly enough, her husband had not disturbed her when he came up. At this very moment he was sleeping heavily at her side. She turned in the bed and looked at him in the half light that was straying through the untidy blinds. He lay on his back, his sparse hair standing on end, his eyes closed and his mouth open, his bristling red moustaches reinforced now by a coarse but scanty growth of beard. His hands clutched the sheets, and his breath passed in and out of his mouth with a stertorous sound. To most people he would have been an unpleasing picture, but Annie Marble did not think so. She was used to it in any case, and his present helpless attitude and appearance always roused the mother spirit within her which was almost her sole ordinary characteristic now. She would have liked to have taken him into her arms and hugged him a little, but she would not do so for fear of disturbing him.