nd they
crowded urgently round him, like a pack of hungry black hounds. After
locking up the house and putting out the gas he took them upstairs with
him--a dreadful escort for a man going to bed. His wife had preceded him
some time before, and with her ample form defined vaguely under the
counterpane, her head on the pillow, and a hand under the cheek offered
to his distraction the view of early drowsiness arguing the possession of
an equable soul. Her big eyes stared wide open, inert and dark against
the snowy whiteness of the linen. She did not move.

She had an equable soul. She felt profoundly that things do not stand
much looking into. She made her force and her wisdom of that instinct.
But the taciturnity of Mr Verloc had been lying heavily upon her for a
good many days. It was, as a matter of fact, affecting her nerves.
Recumbent and motionless, she said placidly:

"You'll catch cold walking about in your socks like this."

This speech, becoming the solicitude of the wife and the prudence of the
woman, took Mr Verloc unawares. He had left his boots downstairs, but he
had forgotten to put on his slippers, and he had been turning about the
bedroom on noiseless pads like a bear in a cage. At the sound of his
wife's voice he stopped and stared at her with a somnambulistic,
expressionless gaze so long that Mrs Verloc moved her limbs slightly
under the bed-clothes. But she did not move her black head sunk in the
white pillow one hand under her cheek and the big, dark, unwinking eyes.

Under her husband's expressionless stare, and remembering her mother's
empty room across the landing, she felt an acute pang of loneliness. She
had never been parted from her mother before. They had stood by each
other. She felt that they had, and she said to herself that now mother
was gone--gone for good. Mrs Verloc had no illusions. Stevie remained,
however. And she said:

"Mother's done what she wanted to do. There's no sense in it that I can
see. I'm sure she couldn't have thought you had enough of her. It's
perfectly wicked, leaving us like that."

Mr Verloc was not a well-read person; his range of allusive phrases was
limited, but there was a peculiar aptness in circumstances which made him
think of rats leaving a doomed ship. He very nearly said so. He had
grown suspicious and embittered. Could it be that the old woman had such
an excellent nose? But the unreasonableness of such a suspicion was
patent