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All four helped to lay the table. The two “old men” knelt on the floor and tried to lengthen the table by means of boards and wedges. The women were on the best of terms at once, for they felt bound together by that very obvious tie which bears the great name of “public opinion.” They respected one another and saved one another’s feelings. They avoided those innuendoes in which husbands and wives are so fond of indulging when their children are not listening, just as if they wanted to say: “We have a right to say these things now we are married.”

When they had eaten the pudding, the barrister made a speech praising the delights of one’s own fireside, that refuge from the world and from all men: that harbour where one spends one’s happiest hours in the company of one’s real friends.

Mary-Louisa began to cry, and when he urged her to tell him the cause of her distress, and the reason of her unhappiness, she told him in a voice broken by sobs that she could see that he was missing his mother and sisters.

He replied that he did not miss them in the least, and that he should wish them far away if they happened to turn up now.

“But why couldn’t he marry her?”

“Weren’t they as good as married?”

“No, they weren’t married properly.”

“By a clergyman? In his opinion a clergyman was nothing but a student who had passed his examinations, and his incantations were pure mythology.”

“That was beyond her, but she knew that something was wrong, and the other people in the house pointed their fingers at her.”

“Let them point!”

Sophy joined in the conversation. She said she knew that they were not good enough for his relations; but she didn’t mind. Let everybody keep his own place and be content.

Anyhow, they had friends now, and lived together in harmony, which is more than could be said of many properly constituted families. The tie which held them together remained intact, but they were otherwise unfettered. They continued being lovers without contracting any bad matrimonial habits, as, for example, the habit of being rude to one another.

After a year or two their union was blest with a son. The mistress had thereby risen to the rank of a mother, and everything else was forgotten. The pangs which she had endured at the birth of the baby, and her care for the newly born infant, had purged her of her old selfish claims to all the good things of the earth, including the monopoly of her husband’s love.

In her new role as mother she gave herself superior little airs with her friend, and showed a little more assurance in her intercourse with her lover.

One day the latter came home with a great piece of news. He had met his eldest sister in the street and had found her well informed on all their private affairs. She was very anxious to see her little nephew and had promised to pay them a call.

Mary-Louisa was surprised, and at once began to sweep and dust the flat; in addition she insisted on a new dress for the occasion. And then she waited for a whole week. The curtains were sent to the laundry, the brass knobs on the doors of the stoves were made to shine, the furniture was polished. The sister should see that her brother was living with a decent person.

And then she made coffee, one morning at eleven o’clock, the time when the sister would call.

She came, straight as if she had swallowed a poker, and gave Mary-Louisa a hand which was as stiff as a batting staff. She examined the bed-room furniture, but refused to drink coffee, and never once looked her sister-in-law in the face. But she showed a faint, though genuine, interest in the baby. Then she went away again.

Mary-Louisa in the meantime had carefully examined her coat, priced the material of her dress and conceived a new idea of doing her hair. She had not expected any great display of cordiality. As a start, the fact of the visit was quite sufficient in itself, and she soon let the house know that her sister-in-law had called.