She bent her head without speaking, and he saw that her hands were moving restlessly.
He lit his cigar in a leisurely fashion, then he drew up a chair and sat down near her and began to smoke.
After a time he set to wonder how long this remarkable vigil was going to hold out. He was determined to keep silence till his wife spoke; he saw she was fighting in her dumb concentrated way for expression; he felt certain some sort of an avalanche was about to descend upon him, and he preferred she should set it sliding herself. Perhaps the girl had had too much lonely struggle and her brain as well as her body had weakened with it, at any rate the first thought she felt herself producing audibly was,
“I wish almost you were a fool, Humphrey!”
He took his cigar out of his mouth. “Indeed, why?”
“Because then,” she said, rather desperately, “I shouldn’t feel so altogether like one myself!”
She stood suddenly up and looked down at him.
“Look here,” she said, “you are better in every point than I am, you are better in brain, you are stronger, you have seen more, you know more, you are better all round. If you were a fool you see, I could despise you; if even you had once made yourself ridiculous in my eyes or had demeaned yourself, what I have to say would come easy.”
“Come to the point at once, Gwen,” he said. “What is it?”
She took no notice of his remark but went to the picture and drew the coverings over the face.