When Gwendolen came back she perceived things were in a slightly unusual poise. Kipps sat by the fire in a rigid attitude reading a casually selected volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Ann was upstairs and inaccessible—to reappear at a later stage with reddened eyes. Before the fire and still in a perfectly assimilable condition was what was evidently an untouched supply of richly buttered toast under a cracked cover.
"They've 'ad a bit of a tiff," said Gwendolen, attending to her duties in the kitchen, with her outdoor hat still on and her mouth full. "They're rummuns—if ever! My eye!"
And she took another piece of Ann's generously buttered toast.
§4
The Kippses spoke no more that day to one another.
The squabble about cards and buttered toast was as serious to them as the most rational of differences. It was all rational to them. Their sense of wrong burnt within them; their sense of what was owing to themselves, the duty of implacability, the obstinacy of pride. In the small hours Kipps lay awake at the nadir of unhappiness and came near groaning. He saw life as an extraordinarily desolating muddle; his futile house, his social discredit, his bad behaviour to Helen, his low marriage to Ann....
He became aware of something irregular in Ann's breathing....
He listened. She was awake and quietly and privately sobbing!
He hardened his heart; resolutely he hardened his heart.