usts of stale bread. Moreover, when Mr Verloc arrived he had
already gone upstairs after his frugal meal. Absorbed in the toil and
delight of literary composition, he had not even answered Mr Verloc's
shout up the little staircase.

"I am taking this young fellow home for a day or two."

And, in truth, Mr Verloc did not wait for an answer, but had marched out
of the cottage at once, followed by the obedient Stevie.

Now that all action was over and his fate taken out of his hands with
unexpected swiftness, Mr Verloc felt terribly empty physically. He
carved the meat, cut the bread, and devoured his supper standing by the
table, and now and then casting a glance towards his wife. Her prolonged
immobility disturbed the comfort of his refection. He walked again into
the shop, and came up very close to her. This sorrow with a veiled face
made Mr Verloc uneasy. He expected, of course, his wife to be very much
upset, but he wanted her to pull herself together. He needed all her
assistance and all her loyalty in these new conjunctures his fatalism had
already accepted.

"Can't be helped," he said in a tone of gloomy sympathy. "Come, Winnie,
we've got to think of to-morrow. You'll want all your wits about you
after I am taken away."

He paused. Mrs Verloc's breast heaved convulsively. This was not
reassuring to Mr Verloc, in whose view the newly created situation
required from the two people most concerned in it calmness, decision, and
other qualities incompatible with the mental disorder of passionate
sorrow. Mr Verloc was a humane man; he had come home prepared to allow
every latitude to his wife's affection for her brother.

Only he did not understand either the nature or the whole extent of that
sentiment. And in this he was excusable, since it was impossible for him
to understand it without ceasing to be himself. He was startled and
disappointed, and his speech conveyed it by a certain roughness of tone.

"You might look at a fellow," he observed after waiting a while.

As if forced through the hands covering Mrs Verloc's face the answer
came, deadened, almost pitiful.

"I don't want to look at you as long as I live."

"Eh? What!" Mr Verloc was merely startled by the superficial and
literal meaning of this declaration. It was obviously unreasonable, the
mere cry of exaggerated grief. He threw over it the mantle of his
marital indulgence. The mind of Mr Verloc lacked profundity. Under the
mis