He called in Fitzjohn's Avenue the next Sunday. For the first time he was without his wife.
He was so downcast, and so penitent, and so ashamed of himself that Mrs. Norman met him halfway with a little rush of affection.
"Why have you not been to see us all this time?" she said.
He looked at her unsteadily; his whole manner betrayed an extreme embarrassment.
"I've come," he said, "on purpose to explain. You mustn't think I don't appreciate your kindness, but the fact is my poor wife"—(She knew that woman was at the bottom of it!)—"is no longer—up to it."
"What is the wretch up to, I should like to know?" thought Mrs. Norman.
He held her with his melancholy, unsteady eyes. He seemed to be endeavoring to approach a subject intimately and yet abstrusely painful.
"She finds the music—just at present—a little too much for her; the vibrations, you know. It's extraordinary how they affect her. She feels them—most unpleasantly—just here." Wilkinson laid two delicate fingers on the middle buttons of his waistcoat.
Mrs. Norman was very kind to him. He was not very expert, poor fellow, in the fabrication of excuses. His look seemed to implore her pardon for the shifts he had been driven to; it appealed to her to help him out, to stand by him in his unspeakable situation.