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I light a cigarette, lean back, inhale deeply —and find myself wondering if my wife is asleep. Or is she lying in her cold bed, staring into the dark, with those trustful, bewildered page 71 eyes. Her eyes are like the eyes of a cow that is being driven along a road. " Why am I being driven—what harm have I done ? " But I really am not responsible for that look ; it's her natural expression. One day, when she was turning out a cupboard, she found a little old photograph of herself, taken when she was a girl at school. In her confirmation dress, she explained. And there were the eyes, even then. I remember saying to her, " Did you always look so sad ? " Leaning over my shoulder, she laughed lightly, " Do I look sad ? I think it's just . . . me." And she waited for me to say something about it. But I was marvelling at her courage at having shown it to me at all. It was a hideous photograph! And I wondered again if she realised how plain she was, and comforted herself with the idea that people who loved each other didn't criticise but accepted everything, or if she really rather liked her appearance and expected me to say something complimentary.

Oh, that was base of me! How could I have forgotten all the numberless times when I have known her turn away to avoid the light, press her face into my shoulders. And, above all, how could I have forgotten the afternoon of our wedding day when we sat on the green bench in the Botanical Gardens and listened to the band, how, in an interval between two pieces, she suddenly turned to me and said in page 72 the voice in which one says, " Do you think the grass is damp ? " or " Do you think it's time for tea ?"..., " Tell me, do you think physical beauty is so very important ? " I don't like to think how often she had rehearsed that question. And do you know what I answered ? At that moment, as if at my command there came a great gush of hard, bright sound from the band, and I managed to shout above it cheerfully, " I didn't hear what you said." Devilish! Wasn't it ? Perhaps not wholly. She looked like the poor patient who hears the surgeon say, " It will certainly be necessary to perform the operation—but not now! "