he growled huskily, "I had never seen Greenwich
Park or anything belonging to it."

The veiled sound filled the small room with its moderate volume, well
adapted to the modest nature of the wish. The waves of air of the proper
length, propagated in accordance with correct mathematical formulas,
flowed around all the inanimate things in the room, lapped against Mrs
Verloc's head as if it had been a head of stone. And incredible as it
may appear, the eyes of Mrs Verloc seemed to grow still larger. The
audible wish of Mr Verloc's overflowing heart flowed into an empty place
in his wife's memory. Greenwich Park. A park! That's where the boy was
killed. A park--smashed branches, torn leaves, gravel, bits of brotherly
flesh and bone, all spouting up together in the manner of a firework.
She remembered now what she had heard, and she remembered it pictorially.
They had to gather him up with the shovel. Trembling all over with
irrepressible shudders, she saw before her the very implement with its
ghastly load scraped up from the ground. Mrs Verloc closed her eyes
desperately, throwing upon that vision the night of her eyelids, where
after a rainlike fall of mangled limbs the decapitated head of Stevie
lingered suspended alone, and fading out slowly like the last star of a
pyrotechnic display. Mrs Verloc opened her eyes.

Her face was no longer stony. Anybody could have noted the subtle change
on her features, in the stare of her eyes, giving her a new and startling
expression; an expression seldom observed by competent persons under the
conditions of leisure and security demanded for thorough analysis, but
whose meaning could not be mistaken at a glance. Mrs Verloc's doubts as
to the end of the bargain no longer existed; her wits, no longer
disconnected, were working under the control of her will. But Mr Verloc
observed nothing. He was reposing in that pathetic condition of optimism
induced by excess of fatigue. He did not want any more trouble--with his
wife too--of all people in the world. He had been unanswerable in his
vindication. He was loved for himself. The present phase of her silence
he interpreted favourably. This was the time to make it up with her.
The silence had lasted long enough. He broke it by calling to her in an
undertone.

"Winnie."

"Yes," answered obediently Mrs Verloc the free woman. She commanded her
wits now, her vocal organs; she felt herself to be in an almost
preternaturall