THE WINDOW 47trust her. She said: 'I am going to the town. ShallI get you stamps, paper, tobacco?’ and she felt himwince. He did not trust her. It was his wife’sdoing. She remembered that iniquity of his wife'stowards him, which had made her turn to steel andadamant there, in the horrid little room in St John’sWood, when with her own eyes she had seen thatodious woman turn him out of the house. He wasunkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had thetiresomeness of an old man with nothing in the worldto do; and she turned him out of the room. She said,in her odious way: ‘Now, Mrs Ramsay and I want tohave a little talk together,' and Mrs Ramsay couldsee, as if before her eyes, the innumerable miseries ofhis life. Had he money enough to buy tobacco?Did he have to ask her for it? half a crown? eighteen-pence? Oh, she could not bear to think of the littleindignities she made him suffer. And always now(why, she could not guess, except that it came prob-ably from that woman somehow) he shrank fromher. He never told her anything. But what morecould she have done? There was a sunny roomgiven up to him. The children were good to him.Never did she show a sign of not wanting him. Shewent out of her way indeed to be friendly. Do youwant stamps, do you want tobacco? Here’s a bookyou might like and so on. And after all—after all(here insensibly she drew herself together, physically,the sense of her own beauty becoming, as it did soseldom, present to her)—after all, she had notgenerally any difficulty in making people like her;for instance, George Manning; Mr Wallace; famousas they were, they would come to her of an evening,
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