THE WINDOWsaw that he did not want to be interrupted — thatwas clear. He was reading something that moved himvery much. He was half smiling and then she knewhe was controlling his emotion. He was tossing thepages over. He was acting it — perhaps he was think-ing himself the person in the book. She wonderedwhat book it was. Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter’s,she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that thelight fell on her knitting. For Charles Tansley hadbeen saying (she looked up as if she expected to hearthe crash of books on the floor above), had been sayingthat people don’t read Scott any more. Then herhusband thought, ‘That’s what they’ll say of me’; sohe went and got one of those books. And if he cameto the conclusion ‘That’s true’ what Charles Tansleysaid, he would accept it about Scott. (She could seethat he was weighing, considering, putting this withthat as he read.) But not about himself. He was alwaysuneasy about himself. That troubled her. He wouldalways be worrying about his own books — will theybe read, are they good, why aren’t they better, whatdo people think of me? Not liking to think of him so,and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why hebecame irritable when they talked about fame andbooks lasting, wondering if the children were laugh-ing at that, she twitched the stocking out, and all thefine gravings came drawn with steel instruments abouther lips and forehead, and she grew still like a treewhich has been tossing and quivering and now, whenthe breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet.

It didn’t matter, any of it, she thought. A greatman, a great book, fame — who could tell? She knewnothing about it. But it was his way with him, his139
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