He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he hoped for anything. He turned to her instinctively. And when the door of the ward opened he did, in fact, feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her. If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have remembered the boy of whom she had been fond—a small, queer boy, who did not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and swaggering, with smears under his red eyes.
Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed the course on which both of them were set.
He did not want her to see. And yet, unknown to himself, he did count on her instant understanding, on some releasing, quickening word or look that would give back life to the dead thing in him. But her eyes, preoccupied and unhappy, avoided him. He could not have appealed to her. He could not have said, as he had meant to do, "Christine is dead." He was silenced by the certain knowledge that all real communication between them had been broken off.
"No. 10 is going to pull through," she said.
They walked slowly down the corridor. He found it difficult to keep his feet. He wondered vaguely why she should talk of No. 10 when Christine was dead. He was puzzled—-confused.
"It seemed likely," he muttered. "Rogers had got his teeth into her."
"I suppose you think he was a fool to try?"
(What was she talking about? He would have to arrange for the funeral. And the money. He did not know whether there would be money enough. It was hideous—to think of a thing like that—to have to go into a shop and say to some bored shopkeeper: "I want a nice cheap coffin, please." For Christine—for whom he had never been able to buy so much as a bunch of flowers.)
"I—I don't know."
"You see, I heard what you said."