Edwin hummed.
Useless for Hilda to take that casual tone! Useless for Edwin to hum! The unconcealable thought in both their minds was--and each could divine the other's thought and almost hear its vibration:
"We might end in the divorce court, too."
Hence their self-consciousness.
The thought was absurd, irrational, indefensible, shocking, it had no father and no mother, it sprang out of naught; but it existed, and it had force enough to make them uncomfortable.
The Etches couple, belonging to the great, numerous, wealthy, and respectable family of Etches, had been married barely a year.
Edwin rose and glanced at his well-tended fingernails. The pleasant animation of his skin caused by the bath was still perceptible. He could feel it in his back, and it helped his conviction of virtue. He chose a cigarette out of his silver case,--a good cigarette, a good case--and lit it, and waved the match into extinction, and puffed out much smoke, and regarded the correctness of the crease in his trousers (the vertical trouser-crease having recently been introduced into the district and insisted on by that tailor and artist and seeker after perfection, Shillitoe), and walked firmly to the door. But the self-consciousness remained.
Just as he reached the door, his wife, gazing at the newspaper, stopped him:
"Edwin."
"What's up?"