A single light burned in Christine's bedroom. It stood low on the pedestal by the wide bed and was heavily shaded, so that only one half of the bed, Christine's half, was exempt¹ from the general gloom of the chamber². The officer had thus ordained³ things. The white, plump arm of Christine was imprisoned⁴ under his neck. He had ordered that too. He was asleep. Christine watched him. On her return from the Albany she had found him apparently⁶ just as she had left him, except that he was much less talkative. Indeed, though unswervingly polite—even punctilious⁷ with her—he had grown quite taciturn and very obstinate⁸ and finicking in self-assertion. There was no detail as to which he did not formulate⁹ a definite wish. Yet not until by chance her eye fell on the whisky decanter did she perceive that in her absence he had been copiously¹⁰ drinking again. He was not, however, drunk. Remorseful¹¹ at her defection, she constituted herself his slave; she covered him with acquiescences; she drank his tippler's breath. And he was not particularly responsive. He had all his own ideas. He ought, for example, to have been hungry, but his idea was that he was not hungry; therefore he had refused her dishes.