ynes; he with his solemnity which extended to the very
eating of bread and butter; she with that air of detachment and
resolution in breasting the commonplace current of their unexciting
life, in which the cutting of bread and butter appeared to me, by a long
way, the most dangerous episode. Sometimes I amused myself by supposing
that to their minds this world of ours must be wearing a perfectly
overwhelming aspect, and that their heads contained respectively awfully
serious and extremely desperate thoughts--and trying to imagine what an
exciting time they must be having of it in the inscrutable depths of
their being. This last was difficult to a volatile person (I am sure
that to the Fynes I was a volatile person) and the amusement in itself
was not very great; but still--in the country--away from all mental
stimulants! ... My efforts had invested them with a sort of amusing
profundity.

But when Fyne and I got back into the room, then in the searching,
domestic, glare of the lamp, inimical to the play of fancy, I saw these
two stripped of every vesture it had amused me to put on them for fun.
Queer enough they were. Is there a human being that isn't that--more or
less secretly? But whatever their secret, it was manifest to me that it
was neither subtle nor profound. They were a good, stupid, earnest
couple and very much bothered. They were that--with the usual unshaded
crudity of average people. There was nothing in them that the lamplight
might not touch without the slightest risk of indiscretion.

Directly we had entered the room Fyne announced the result by saying
"Nothing" in the same tone as at the gate on his return from the railway
station. And as then Mrs Fyne uttered an incisive "It's what I've
said," which might have been the veriest echo of her words in the
garden. We three looked at each other as if on the brink of a
disclosure. I don't know whether she was vexed at my presence. It
could hardly be called intrusion--could it? Little Fyne began it. It
had to go on. We stood before her, plastered with the same mud (Fyne
was a sight!), scratched by the same brambles, conscious of the same
experience. Yes. Before her. And she looked at us with folded arms,
with an extraordinary fulness of assumed responsibility. I addressed
her.

"You don't believe in an accident, Mrs Fyne, do you?"

She shook her head in curt negation while, caked in mud and
inexpressibly serious-faced, Fyne seemed to be