, and Mr Verloc held his tongue. Not altogether, however. He
muttered heavily:

"Perhaps it's just as well."

He began to undress. Mrs Verloc kept very still, perfectly still, with
her eyes fixed in a dreamy, quiet stare. And her heart for the fraction
of a second seemed to stand still too. That night she was "not quite
herself," as the saying is, and it was borne upon her with some force
that a simple sentence may hold several diverse meanings--mostly
disagreeable. How was it just as well? And why? But she did not allow
herself to fall into the idleness of barren speculation. She was rather
confirmed in her belief that things did not stand being looked into.
Practical and subtle in her way, she brought Stevie to the front without
loss of time, because in her the singleness of purpose had the unerring
nature and the force of an instinct.

"What I am going to do to cheer up that boy for the first few days I'm
sure I don't know. He'll be worrying himself from morning till night
before he gets used to mother being away. And he's such a good boy. I
couldn't do without him."

Mr Verloc went on divesting himself of his clothing with the unnoticing
inward concentration of a man undressing in the solitude of a vast and
hopeless desert. For thus inhospitably did this fair earth, our common
inheritance, present itself to the mental vision of Mr Verloc. All was
so still without and within that the lonely ticking of the clock on the
landing stole into the room as if for the sake of company.

Mr Verloc, getting into bed on his own side, remained prone and mute
behind Mrs Verloc's back. His thick arms rested abandoned on the outside
of the counterpane like dropped weapons, like discarded tools. At that
moment he was within a hair's breadth of making a clean breast of it all
to his wife. The moment seemed propitious. Looking out of the corners
of his eyes, he saw her ample shoulders draped in white, the back of her
head, with the hair done for the night in three plaits tied up with black
tapes at the ends. And he forbore. Mr Verloc loved his wife as a wife
should be loved--that is, maritally, with the regard one has for one's
chief possession. This head arranged for the night, those ample
shoulders, had an aspect of familiar sacredness--the sacredness of
domestic peace. She moved not, massive and shapeless like a recumbent
statue in the rough; he remembered her wide-open eyes looking into the
empty room. Sh