“I really must open the window for one little second,” she said, and did so. The chill air of the street came through the closed shutters, and the old man made a noise as of shivering. She pushed back the shutters, and closed the window, and then did the same with the other two windows. It was almost day in the room.
“You will no longer need the candle,” she said, and came back to the bedside to extinguish it.
The benign and fatherly old man put his arm round her waist. Fresh from the tonic of pure air, and with the notion of his ridiculousness still in her mind, she was staggered for an instant by this gesture. She had never given a thought to the temperament of the old grocer, the husband of a young wife. She could not always imaginatively keep in mind the effect of her own radiance, especially under such circumstances. But after an instant her precocious cynicism, which had slept, sprang up. “Naturally! I might have expected it!” she thought with blasting scorn.
“Take away your hand!” she said bitterly to the amiable old fool. She did not stir.
He obeyed, sheepishly.
“Do you wish to remain with me?” she asked, and as he did not immediately answer, she said in a most commanding tone: “Answer, then!”
“Yes,” he said feebly.
“Well, behave properly.”
She went towards the door.
“I wished only—” he stammered.