Read "The Man who Would not Play Cards" by H.C. McNeile online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
With fingers that fumbled over the unaccustomed stiff shirt, Hugh Massingham was dressing for dinner. His first dinner with his wife for four years. It was the moment he had dreamed of through long, sweltering days in Mesopotamia -- and now that it had come, he was afraid.
Things were different to what he had expected; Delia was different. He could hear her now, moving about in the next room, and her voice as she spoke to her maid. Somehow, he hadn't expected that maid. He had hoped -- well, it didn't much matter what he'd hoped. Anyway, it was absurd: naturally, his wife would have a maid.