her direction,
because that would not be safe. It is very difficult to look as if you
have not been doing anything when the facts are the other way, and my
confidence in my performance oozed steadily out of me as I went along. I
was aiming for the left-hand door because it was furthest from my wife.
It had never been opened from the day that the house was built, but it
seemed a blessed refuge for me now. The bed was this one, wherein I am
lying now, and dictating these histories morning after morning with so
much serenity. It was this same old elaborately carved black Venetian
bedstead--the most comfortable bedstead that ever was, with space enough
in it for a family, and carved angels enough surmounting its twisted
columns and its headboard and footboard to bring peace to the sleepers,
and pleasant dreams. I had to stop in the middle of the room. I hadn't
the strength to go on. I believed that I was under accusing eyes--that
even the carved angels were inspecting me with an unfriendly gaze. You
know how it is when you are convinced that somebody behind you is
looking steadily at you. You _have_ to turn your face--you can't help
it. I turned mine. The bed was placed as it is now, with the foot where
the head ought to be. If it had been placed as it should have been, the
high headboard would have sheltered me. But the footboard was no
sufficient protection, for I could be seen over it. I was exposed. I was
wholly without protection. I turned, because I couldn't help it--and my
memory of what I saw is still vivid, after all these years.

Against the white pillows I saw the black head--I saw that young and
beautiful face; and I saw the gracious eyes with a something in them
which I had never seen there before. They were snapping and flashing
with indignation. I felt myself crumbling; I felt myself shrinking away
to nothing under that accusing gaze. I stood silent under that
desolating fire for as much as a minute, I should say--it seemed a very,
very long time. Then my wife's lips parted, and from them issued--_my
latest bath-room remark_. The language perfect, but the expression
velvety, unpractical, apprenticelike, ignorant, inexperienced, comically
inadequate, absurdly weak and unsuited to the great language. In my
lifetime I had never heard anything so out of tune, so inharmonious, so
incongruous, so ill-suited to each other as were those mighty words set
to that feeble music. I tried to keep from laughing, for I was a