Before the Fact by Francis Iles

taste.”
    “So long as it’s only the clothes and not the women inside them,” Janet said drily. “Are you ever jealous of Johnnie, Lina?”
    “No,” Lina said simply. “I’ve never thought about it. And, in any case, I’ve no cause to be. I should know at once if I had. Johnnie’s far too transparent to be able to hide anything like that.”
    “Never underrate your opponent, my dear.”
    “I suppose,” Lina mused, “that I should be upset if Johnnie ever were unfaithful to me. I try to persuade myself that I’m modern, and unfaithfulness doesn’t matter really, so long as it’s only an incident and nothing serious; but ... Yes, I should be upset. But I shouldn’t go off the deep end. In any case, Johnnie would always come back to me.”
    “He’d be a fool if he didn’t,” said Janet with conviction.
    “Mrs. Newsham,” said the parlourmaid, opening the door.
    “Damn!” said Janet, under her breath, with gentle inaudibility.
    Lina echoed her sentiment silently. Janet had shown signs of getting most interesting.
    “Well, I suppose I’ve got to get along to my guides. Thanks for tea, Lina,” said Janet, who did not like Freda Newsham.
3
    Lina’s drawing room gave her a great deal of pleasure. It was a long, high, rather narrow room, with three tall windows that came down to broad sills within a foot of the floor and through which one could step straight out onto the lawn that ran up to the walls of the house.
    Lina had furnished it sparsely. There was a polished board floor, with a few good rugs, a piano (on which Lina did not play so much as she should), a couch, a few easy chairs, and a couple of occasional tables; the end opposite the fireplace was covered entirely by bookshelves. There were no unnecessary ornaments or fripperies; Lina’s taste was severe to the pitch of strictness.
    The only possibly inutilitarian objects in the room were four Hepplewhite chairs, which Lina’s mother had given her from home and which were really too good to be sat in; but their painted backs had provided the keynote on which Lina had based her whole colour-scheme; just as she had built up that of the dining room from the tints of a big Pieter Snyders still life that hung over the mantelpiece.
    She came back one afternoon in late January from a shopping expedition into distant Bournemouth, to find Johnnie unexpectedly consuming a late tea by the fire. Almost as she entered the room she was conscious vaguely of a feeling of something lacking, but the indefinite sensation was lost in her surprise at seeing Johnnie.
    She came forward, pulling off her gloves, to give him the kiss without which he would never let her enter a room in which he was. “You’re back early to-day, darling.”
    “Yes,” said Johnnie. “Had a good day?”
    “Fairly. I couldn’t get quite what I wanted, but—”
    “Hullo, you’ve got a new hat. I say, that’s a peach, isn’t it?”
    “Do you like it?” said Lina, pleased.
    “It’s the prettiest you’ve had for years. Clever little monkeyface, aren’t you?” He caught her hand and pulled her down on his knee.
    “Darling, I want my tea,” Lina protested with a laugh, and thought how wonderful it was that after more than three years of marriage Johnnie should still want to sit her on his knee.
    “Have your tea here,” pronounced Johnnie.
    Lina manipulated the teapot, her back to the room. Johnnie held her quite tightly round the waist.
    “Darling, I must get up. I want to take my coat off.”
    This time Johnnie let her go. She rose, took off her coat, and laid it over the back of a chair. Again the curious sense of emptiness invaded her. She looked round the room.
    “Johnnie! Where are the Hepplewhite chairs?”
    Johnnie jumped up from his chair and put his arms round her, holding her against his chest. “Sweetheart, I’ve got an awfully good bit of news for you. Listen. You remember that American I told you about? Well, he—”
    “What American? You never told me