Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/54

 breach that began to make itself felt, a breach which she knew Keble associated in some vague way with the funeral of little Billy Salter. Keble, for his part, had made no mention of the poem, and day after day those accusatory blue marks continued to peer through the unanswered correspondence that rested on his table. Although she argued the lines out of countenance, though she watched for Keble's polite mask to fall and reveal some emotion that would disprove her interpretation of them, they ate into her heart.

The poem might have been a hint from Providence. She was an impediment to Keble's progress, a poor creature unable to comprehend the hereditary urges that bore him along in a direction that seemed to her futile. How often must he have been legitimately impatient of her deficiencies! How often must he have starved for the internationally flavored chit-chat with which a wife like Girlie Windrom would have entertained him! With what a bitter sigh must he have read his thought thus expressed by an unknown poet! That would account for the marking and the clipping. She promised herself to profit by the hint, if hint it were.

As the breach widened, Keble maintained the deferential attitude he had always assumed in the course of their hitherto negligible misunderstandings. Technically he was always in the right. Her acquaintance with people of his class had been large enough to teach her that good breeding implied the