Supposing all the time, deep down, in his secret mysterious life, he had cared?
"We must leave off thinking about him," Roddy said. "If we keep on thinking we shall go off our heads."
"We are off our heads," she said.
Their hatred of themselves was a biting, aching madness. She hated the conceited, happy self that hadn't cared. The piano, gleaming sombrely in the hushed light, reminded her of it.
She hated the piano.
They dragged themselves back into the dining-room where Mamma and Dan sat doing nothing, hiding their faces from each other. The afternoon went on. Utter callousness, utter weariness came over them.
Their mother kept looking at the clock. "Uncle Victor will have got to Durlingham," she said. An hour ago she had said, "Uncle Victor will have got to York." Their minds clung to Uncle Victor as they had clung, four days ago, to Dan, because of his unconsciousness.
X.
Uncle Victor had put his arm on her shoulder. He was leaning rather heavily.
He saw what she saw: the immense coffin set up on trestles at the foot of the bed; the sheeted body packed tight in the padded white lining, the hands, curling a little, smooth and stiff, the hands of a wax figure; the firm, sallowish white face; the brown stains, like iodine, about the nostrils; the pale under lip pushed out, proudly.