"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Bouncing, with a shiver, "I never have seen a corpse!"
Winn escorted her to the bedside and then turned away from her. She looked down at her dead husband. Mr. Bouncing had no anxiety in his face at all now; he looked incredibly contented and young.
"I—I suppose he really is gone?" said Mrs. Bouncing in a low voice. Then she moved waveringly over to a big armchair.
"There is no doubt about it at all," said Winn. "I didn't ring up Gurnet. He will come in any case first thing to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Bouncing moved her beringed hands nervously, and then suddenly began to cry. She cried quietly into her pocket-handkerchief, with her shoulders shaking.
"I wish things hadn't happened!" she sobbed. "Oh, dear! I wish things hadn't happened!" She did not refer to the death of Mr. Bouncing. Winn said nothing. "I really didn't mean any harm," Mrs. Bouncing went on between her sobs—"not at first. You know how things run on; and he'd been ill seven years, and one does like a little bit of fun, doesn't one?"
"I shouldn't think about all that now," Winn replied. "It isn't suitable."
Mrs. Bouncing shook her head and sobbed louder; sobbing seemed a refuge from suitability.
"I wouldn't have minded," she said brokenly, "if I'd heated his milk. I always thought he was so silly about having skin on it. I didn't believe when he came up-stairs it was because he was really worse. I wanted the sitting-room to myself. Oh dear! oh dear! I said it was all nonsense! And he said, 'Never mind, Millie; it won't be for long,' and I thought he meant he'd get down-stairs again. And he didn't; he meant this!"
Winn cleared his throat.