he dropped her arms; her face twitched. She looked straight into his
eyes and seemed incapable of pronouncing a word. He frowned at her.

"I--wish--it," he said, tyrannically. "For your own sake also. . . ."
He meant to carry that point without any pity. Why didn't she speak?
He feared passive resistance. She must. . . . Make her come. His frown
deepened, and he began to think of some effectual violence, when most
unexpectedly she said in a firm voice, "Yes, I can," and clutched the
chair-back again. He was relieved, and all at once her attitude ceased
to interest him. The important thing was that their life would
begin again with an every-day act--with something that could not be
misunderstood, that, thank God, had no moral meaning, no perplexity--and
yet was symbolic of their uninterrupted communion in the past--in all
the future. That morning, at that table, they had breakfast together;
and now they would dine. It was all over! What had happened between
could be forgotten--must be forgotten, like things that can only happen
once--death for instance.

"I will wait for you," he said, going to the door. He had some
difficulty with it, for he did not remember he had turned the key. He
hated that delay, and his checked impatience to be gone out of the
room made him feel quite ill as, with the consciousness of her presence
behind his back, he fumbled at the lock. He managed it at last; then in
the doorway he glanced over his shoulder to say, "It's rather late--you
know--" and saw her standing where he had left her, with a face white as
alabaster and perfectly still, like a woman in a trance.

He was afraid she would keep him waiting, but without any breathing
time, he hardly knew how, he found himself sitting at table with her.
He had made up his mind to eat, to talk, to be natural. It seemed to
him necessary that deception should begin at home. The servants must not
know--must not suspect. This intense desire of secrecy; of secrecy dark,
destroying, profound, discreet like a grave, possessed him with the
strength of a hallucination--seemed to spread itself to inanimate
objects that had been the daily companions of his life, affected with a
taint of enmity every single thing within the faithful walls that would
stand forever between the shamelessness of facts and the indignation of
mankind. Even when--as it happened once or twice--both the servants left
the room together he remained carefully natural, industriously hungry