of the
damned thing, can't you? Help me out of the damn thing'; and presently
hobbled in and joined us, and soon after that lunch, exquisitely cooked
and served and all very nice, too.

"Well, as I say, old man, I always rather liked his wife.
I--always--rather--liked--her. But somehow, as we went on through lunch,
and then on after that, I didn't like her quite so much.
Not--quite--so--much. I don't know. Have you ever seen a woman unpicking
a bit of sewing? Always looks rather angry with it, I suppose because
it's got to be unpicked. They sort of flip the threads out, as much as
to say, '_Come_ out of it, drat you. _That's_ you, drat you.' Well, that
was the way she spoke to old Sabre. Sort of snipped off the end of what
he was saying and left it hanging, if you follow me. That was the way
she spoke to him when she did speak to him. But for the most part they
hardly spoke to one another at all. I talked to her, or I talked to him,
but the conversation never got triangular. Whenever it threatened to,
_snip!_ she'd have his corner off and leave him floating. Tell you what
it was, old man, I jolly soon saw that the reason old Sabre was so jolly
anxious for me to stay to lunch was because meals without dear old me or
some other chatty intellectual were about as much like a feast of reason
and a flow of soul as a vinegar bottle and a lukewarm potato on a cold
plate. Similarly with the exuberance of his greeting of me. I hate to
confess it, but it wasn't so much splendid old me he had been so
delighted to see as any old body to whom he could unloose his tongue
without having the end of his nose snipped off.

"Mind you, I don't mean that he was cowed and afraid to open his mouth
in his wife's presence. Nothing a bit like that. What I got out of it
was that he was starved, intellectually starved, mentally starved,
starved of the good old milk of human kindness--_that's_ what I mean.
Everything he put up he threw down, not because she wanted to snub him,
but because she either couldn't or wouldn't take the faintest interest
in anything that interested him. Course, she may have had jolly good
reason. I daresay she had. Still, there it was, and it seemed rather
rotten to me. I didn't like it. Damn it, the chap only had one decent
leg under the table and an uncommonly tired-looking face above it, and I
felt rather sorry for him."

III

"After lunch I said, 'Well, now, old man, what about going up to this
room of yours and