442 ANGEL PAVEMENT

round in his chair, for she had retreated towards the
door: "Well, see you come back sober/' he said.

"What's that?"

But he did not repeat it. He wished it unsaid. The
instant after it had slipped out, he wanted to call it back.
And, for all her "What's that?" she had heard him all
right; she was staring at him now, with some of her high
colour gone and her mouth curiously drawn down; her
whole attitude was different from what it had been
during their noisy argument; she was really hurt, this
time; he had gone too far, miles and miles too far.

"Yes, I heard you, though," she said quietly, "and it's
the nastiest thing, by a long, long way, that you've said
to me in twenty years. Did you ever know me come back
in any other way but sober?"

"No, no," he muttered. "I'm sorry ... bit of a joke.1'
He couldn't look her in the face.

"Bit of a joke! I wish it was. But it wasn't. You
meant it, Herbert Smeeth. You meant to be as nasty as
you could be. There's only another thing worse you
could say to your wife, and you'd better hurry up and
get that said."

"I tell you, I'm sorry," He got up from his chair now,
and looked at her, mumbling something about ''going
too fa;."

"Yes, and I'm sorry too," she said bitterly. "I didn't
think you'd got a nasty thing like that in your head to
say. Oh, I know it slipped out, and now you wish it
hadn't. But it oughtn't to have been there to slip out
That's what hurts me."

"Well after all, you've as good as called me a miser-
or at any rate, a mean devil—half a dozen times to-night,"
he told her, but not with much confidence.