lunch she had not troubled to
put a question about the paper. She was even ashamed of her social
indifference. That Sarah Gailey, narrow and preoccupied, should be
indifferent, should never once in three months have referred to her
brother's organ, was not surprising; but it was monstrous that she,
Hilda, the secretary, the priestess, should share this uncivil apathy;
and it was unjust to mark the newspaper, as somehow she had been doing,
with the stigma of her mother's death. She actually began to
characterize her recent mental attitude to her past life as morbid.

"Oh!" he murmured absently, with gloomy hesitation, as he manipulated
the pencil.

She went on still more persuasively:

"I suppose you've got a new secretary?"

"No," he said, as though it fatigued and annoyed him to dwell on the
subject. "I told 'em they must manage without.... It's no fun starting a
new paper in a God-forsaken hole like the Five Towns, I can tell you."

Plainly his high exuberant hopes had been dashed, had perhaps been
destroyed.

She did not reply. She could not. She became suddenly sad with sympathy,
and this sadness was beautiful to her. Already, when he was scribbling
on it, she had noticed that his wristband was frayed. Now, silhouetted
against the window, the edge of the wristband caught her attention
again, and grew strangely significant. This man was passing through
adversity! It seemed tragic and shocking to her that he should have to
pass through adversity, that he could not remain for ever triumphant,
brilliant, cocksure in all his grand schemes, and masculinely scathless.
It seemed wrong to her that he should suffer, and desirable that anybody
should suffer rather than he. George Cannon with faulty linen! By what
error of destiny had this heart-rending phenomenon of discord been
caused? (Yes, heart-rending!) Was it due to weary carelessness, or to
actual, horrible financial straits? Either explanation was very painful
to her. She had a vision of a whole sisterhood of women toiling amid
steam and soapsuds in secret, and in secret denying themselves, to
provide him with all that he lacked, so that he might always emerge into
the world unblemished and glitteringly perfect. She would have
sacrificed the happiness of multitudes to her sense of fitness.

V

There being no table, George Cannon removed a grotesque ornament from
the dwarf bookcase, and used the top of the bookcase as a writing-board.
Hilda was called upon t