Again it was, inconceivably, the mingled childishness, callousness and considerateness. That, at the moment, she could think of the formality, suffocated him. "Good-bye," he replied, not looking round.
The door opened and closed. He heard her swift feet passing down the passage to their room.
She was not reckless. She needed her hat and coat at least. Quiet, rational determination was in all her actions.
Yet, as he waited to hear her come out again, a hope that he knew to be chimerical rose in him. She would, perhaps, return, throw herself in his arms and, weeping, say that she loved him and could not leave him. Gregory's heart beat quickly.
But when he heard her footsteps again they were not returning. They passed along to the kitchen; she was speaking to Mrs. Barker—Gregory had a shoot of surface thought for Mrs. Barker's astonishment; they entered the hall again, the hall door closed behind them.
Gregory stood looking at the Bouddha. The tears kept mounting to his throat and eyes and, furiously, he choked them back. He did not see the Bouddha.
But, suddenly becoming aware of the bland contemplative gaze of the great bronze image, his eyes fixed themselves on it.
He had known it from the first to be an enemy. Its presage was fulfilled. The tidal wave had broken over his life.