Slide to View Image: Opacity 0%
 
THE WINDOW— not being able to tell him the truth, being afraid,for instance, about the greenhouse roof and the ex-pense it would be, fifty pounds perhaps, to mend it;and then about his books, to be afraid that he mightguess, what she a little suspected, that his last bookwas not quite his best book (she gathered that fromWilliam Bankes); and then to hide small daily things,and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid onthem — all this diminished the entire joy, the purejoy, of the two notes sounding together, and let thesound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.

A shadow was on the page; she looked up. It wasAugustus Carmichael shuffling past, precisely now, atthe very moment when it was painful to be remindedof the inadequacy of human relationships, that themost perfect was flawed, and could not bear the exam-ination which, loving her husband, with her instinctfor truth, she turned upon it; when it was painful tofeel herself convicted of unworthiness, and impededin her proper function by these lies, these exaggera-tions — it was at this moment when she was frettedthus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation, that Mr.Carmichael shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, andsome demon in her made it necessary for her to callout, as he passed,

'Going indoors, Mr. Carmichael?'8He said nothing. He took opium. The children said hehad stained his beard yellow with it. Perhaps. Whatwas obvious to her was that the poor man was un-happy, came to them every year as an escape; and yet494 - L.