all, she merely replied, with wonderful meekness, that she only weighed
seven stone twelve. When he informed her that the breakfast-room,
already not too light, was underneath the proposed balcony, which would
further darken it, she kept an angelic silence. And when he showed her
that the view from the proposed balcony would in any case be marred by
the immense pall of Five Towns smoke to the south, she still kept an
angelic silence.

Stephen could not understand it.

Nor was this all. She became extraordinarily solicitous for his welfare,
especially in the matter of health. She wrapped him up when he went out,
and unpacked him when he came in. She cautioned him against draughts,
overwork, microbes, and dietary indiscretions. Thanks to regular boxing
exercise, his old dyspepsia had almost entirely disappeared, but this
did not prevent her from watching every mouthful that vanished under the
portals of his moustache. And she superintended his boxing too. She made
a point of being present whenever he and Charlie boxed, and she would
force Charlie to cease fighting at the oddest moments. She was flat
against having a motor-car; she compelled Stephen to drive to the
station in the four-wheeler instead of in the high dogcart. Indeed, from
the way she guarded him, he might have been the one frail life that
stood between England and anarchy.

And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistful
fashion.

No. Stephen could _not_ understand it.

There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it.
And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. The
fascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matter
with her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knew
differently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidant
of Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. Then
Stephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, he
swore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continue
with his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his query
why she was pale, she said she didn't know.

He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.

For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him
with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing
bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was
the same thing as prophesying