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René looked up from his correspondence, momentarily stung almost to fury by the brazen naïvely mercenary calculations of the good Hester, with her garishly stock notion of what was a propitious moment.

'Oh, that would be it? I'm glad to know that. I shall bear that in mind.' He pushed his correspondence away. 'Hester. Apropos.'

'Yes, René.' She had sunk back in her chair and stared at him apprehensively.

'Yes, very much, I am afraid, apropos. There is something I have to talk to you about, and this seems a good moment. I have just sent in my resignation to the University. I had not obtained special leave of absence. I fear that I deceived you; I said that in order to delay giving you the news of my resignation. There is going to be another of these crazy and extremely wicked wars. As I no longer have my job, I propose to go to Canada. That, in the crudest outline, is what had to be imparted.'

He fastened a hard stare upon her, as though he had dropped something into Essie and were waiting to see it emerge. But at the moment she appeared incapable of any reaction at all. Her face had gone a little grey, her eyes still stared, but very blankly, even a shade piteously. Among other things she had the sensation of having been unmasked, or (the same thing) seen through. As Essie did not possess a very tough core, she was unprepared and a little abashed. And he went on staring at her so coldly that her uppermost impulse was to cry. But she did not do so. Instead she said, 'I knew that something was the matter. I saw you were . . . I saw you were trying very hard to hide something.' To see her pathetically clinging, even at this juncture, to what she regarded as her superior insight, in her capacity of female of the species, faintly amused her husband. He smiled, almost contemptuously.