“TWICE in one day,” thought Al. “It won’t do! We can’t go on like this!”
He was walking up and down that bedroom he so hated, with its silly little four post bed and the thick carpet, and the offensive, dainty imitation masculinity of it—a woman’s idea of a man’s room. Two little blue shaded electric lamps, a fool of a little table—he kicked at the table as he passed it, and Andrée’s photograph on it fell down. He was profoundly disturbed, not so much angry as dismayed. Trapped; no way of getting out....
“Why, damn it all!” he cried. “I can’t be like this! This isn’t me! This isn’t what I meant! We are interfering—every hour of the day, with each other. It won’t do!”
The first thing had been his fault, he admitted; he shouldn’t have been so vehement, or so hasty. But it had been the sort of thing hardest of all for him to endure with patience.
He had gone into the kitchen, where he was not expected to go, because he had been hungry at a wrong time, and there he had seen a hideous thing. It might have looked to other people like a char-woman scrubbing the floor, but to him it was very much more than that. She didn’t even look up; what concern was it of hers who came and went in this house? She was a wretched little old woman; he stood in the doorway looking down at her, at the tiny knob of white hair on her bony skull, her narrow shoulders working stiffly, at her clumsy hands pushing the brush back and forth. She breathed hard from her puny effort; she tried to appear more vigorous when she heard someone enter, being well aware that for the char-women of the world effort is accounted of more worth than accomplishment. He stared and stared at her, crawling slowly on her hands and knees, doing this work in the stupidest and cruellest way.... On the kitchen table her lunch was set out for her on a newspaper by the superior visiting maid; no one would come near her or speak to her; she was shut up here to scrub alone.
“Here! Get up!” he said, abruptly.
She looked round with bleared and watery eyes.
“Get up!” he said, again.
“But I ain’t done,” she protested.
“Get up!” he shouted. He could not tolerate for one instant longer the sight of this old creature at his feet; it was obscene. She clutched at the table and pulled herself to her feet.