I suppose they very early
deaden their spiritual faculties; perhaps by loose habits of life,
or by the indulgence of excessive self-esteem, or by----"
Jerome made a quick gesture with his hands, as if defending himself
against a blow; then he turned to his wife, and regarded her
fixedly.
"Will it take you much longer," he asked, with obvious struggle for
self-command, but speaking courteously, "to exhaust this theme?"
"It annoys you?" said the lady, very coldly, straightening herself
to an offended attitude.
"I confess it does. Or rather, it worries me. If I may beg----"
"I understood you to invite me to your room."
"I did. And the fact of my having done so ought, I should think, to
have withheld you from assailing me with your acrid tedium."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Otway, as she rose to her full height. "I
will leave you to your own tedium, which must be acrid enough, I
imagine, to judge from the face you generally wear."
And she haughtily withdrew.
A scene of this kind--never more violent, always checked at the
right moment--occurred between them about once every month. During
the rest of their time they lived without mutual aggression; seldom
conversing, but maintaining the externals of ordinary domestic
intercourse. Nor was either of them acutely unhappy. The old man
(Jerome Otway was sixty-five, but might have been taken for seventy)
did not, as a rule, wear a sour countenance; he seldom smiled, but
his grave air had no cast of gloominess; it was profoundly
meditative, tending often to the rapture of high vision.
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