She shifted sharply, she knocked him as she pretended to pick up her glove, she groped among his feet.

He came to, rather bewildered, exposed. Anybody but her would have pitied him. She wanted to rend him. He did not know what was amiss, what he had been doing.

As they sat at dinner, in their cottage, he was dazed by the chill of antagonism from her. She did not know why she was so angry. But she was incensed.

“Why do you never listen to the sermon?” she asked, seething with hostility and violation.

“I do,” he said.

“You don't — you don't hear a single word.”

He retired into himself, to enjoy his own