He sank deeper into memory.
"Nobody knows what she was to me. She wasn't one much for society. She went into it" (his manner implied that she had adorned it) "to please me, because I thought it might do her good. It was one of the things we tried."
Mrs. Norman stared at him. She stared through him and beyond him, and saw a strange man. She listened to a strange voice that sounded far off, from somewhere beyond forgetfulness.
"There were times," she heard him saying, "when we could not go out or see anyone. All we wanted was to be alone together. We could sit, she and I, a whole evening without saying a word. We each knew what the other wanted to say without saying it. I was always sure of her; she understood me as nobody else ever can." He paused. "All that's gone."
"Oh, no," Mrs. Norman said, "it isn't."
"It is." He illuminated himself with a faint flame of passion.
"Don't say that, when you have friends who understand."
"They don't. They can't. And," said Wilkinson, "I don't want them to."
Mrs. Norman sat silent, as in the presence of something sacred and supreme.
She confessed afterward that what had attracted her to Peter Wilkinson was his tremendous capacity for devotion. Only (this she did not confess) she never dreamed that it had been given to his wife.