Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/440

370 isn't anything the matter," he said, looking away. "I thought I'd come home to lunch. Is there anything wrong about that?"

His wife, Mary Webster, came to the back door of the house and called her daughter. When she saw her husband her eyebrows went up. "This is unexpected. What brought you home at this time of the day?" she asked.

They went into the house and along a hallway to the dining-room, but there was no place set for him. He had the feeling they both thought there was something wrong, almost immoral, about his being home at that time of the day. It was unexpected and the unexpected had a doubtful air. He concluded he had better explain. "I had a headache and thought I would come home and lie down for an hour," he said. He felt they looked relieved, as though he had taken a load off their minds, and smiled at the thought. "May I have a cup of tea? Will it be too much trouble?" he asked.

While the tea was being brought he pretended to look out at a window, but in secret studied his wife's face. She was like her daughter. There was nothing written on her face. Her body was getting heavy.

She had been a tall slender girl with yellow hair when he married her. Now the impression she gave off was of one who had grown large without purpose, "somewhat as cattle are fattened for slaughter," he thought. One did not feel the bone and muscle back of her bulk. Her yellow hair that, when she was younger, had a way of glistening strangely in the sunlight was now rather colourless. It had the air of being dead at the roots and there were folds of quite meaningless flesh on the face among which little streams of wrinkles wandered.

"Her face is a blank thing, untouched by the finger of life," he thought. "She is a tall flower, without a foundation, that will soon fall down." There was something very lovely and at the same time rather terrible to himself in the state he was now in. Things he said or thought to himself had a kind of poetic power in them. A group of words formed in his mind and the words had power and meaning. He sat playing with the handle of the teacup. Suddenly a great desire to see his own body came over him. He arose and with an apology went out of the room and up a stairway. His wife called to him. "Jane and I are going to drive out into the country. Is there anything I can do for you before we go?"