"A sheet."
"A sheet? Do you make sheets? I thought you bought them all ready."
"You do, if you want to throw away every one that gets a hole in it. But you can cut them in two—they usually wear in the center—and sew them up again and they're as good as new except for the seam."
Roger was disappointed. No doubt it was an excellent method, but it annoyed him. It was so vehemently sensible and frugal.
"It seems to me that's mending—in extremis. If we need new sheets I wish you'd buy them."
"We don't need new sheets. These are for mamma. Hers are almost all gone."
Roger felt as if he were being quietly suffocated in an ocean of mended sheets. He sat looking at Anne until his eyes disturbed her beyond her power to pretend indifference. She glanced up, but before she could ask him why he was so interested in her sewing, Roger spoke.
"Anne," he said slowly, "why aren't things the same as they used to be between us?"
At last it had come, the thing that had been moving toward her for weeks. It had taken possession of her. The matter was no longer in her control.
"I don't know."