Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

The change in "Doomsday" was as apparent as the change in its master. The frowsiness had gone from it. One glance at the tiled floor of the living-room made Mary remember the qualms it had raised in her with its grease-spots and the debris of food and match-ends and shreds of tobacco scattered about. All this was changed. The brass candlesticks, the canisters, the tobacco tins and pipes on the shelf above the fireplace showed the new order. The workbench had gone. The room was almost meticulously neat, and she--who knew how much self-discipline so nice an orderliness implied, was instantly touched by it. The room's neatness was masculine, ascetic, rigid; woman's neatness is different; it suggests sentiment, colour.

But Furze had forgotten to wind the clock. One of these cheap, old- fashioned clocks, with a painted glass door, it stood on the high mantelshelf, showing a view of a very white windmill on a very green hill. To forget to wind a clock is human.