The knee swelled and for two days Low Jinks had to keep her leg on a chair. It greatly annoyed Mabel to see Low Jinks sitting in the kitchen with her leg "stuck out on a chair." She told Sabre it was extraordinary how "that class of person" always got in such a horrible state from the most ridiculous trifles. "I suppose I knock my knee a dozen times a week, but my knee doesn't swell up and get disgusting. You're always reading in the paper about common people getting stung by wasps, or getting a scratch from a nail, and dying the next day. They must be in a horrible state. It always makes me feel quite sick." Sabre laughed. "Well, I expect poor old Low Jinks feels pretty sick too." "She enjoys it." "What, sitting there with a knee like a muffin? I had a look at her just now. Don't you think she might have one of those magazines to read? She looks pretty sorry for herself." Signs of "flying up." "You haven't given her a magazine, have you?" "No--I haven't. But I told her I would after dinner." "If you don't mind you won't. Rebecca has plenty to occupy her time. She can perfectly well clean the silver and things like that, and she has her sewing. She has upset the house quite enough with her leg stuck out on a chair all day without reading magazines." And then in the extraordinary way in which discussions between them were suddenly lifted by Mabel on to unsuspected grievances against him, Sabre suddenly found himself confronted with, "You know how she hurt her knee, I suppose?" He knew the tone. "No. My fault, was it?" "Yes. As it happens, it was your fault--to do with you." "Good lord! However did I manage to hurt Low Jinks's knee?" "She did it bringing in your bicycle." He thought, "Now what on earth is this leading up to?" During the weeks of his separation from Mabel, thinking often of Nona, he had caused himself to think from her to Mabel. His reasoning and reasonable habit of mind had made him, finding extraordinary rest in thought of Nona, accuse himself for finding none in thought of Mabel. She was his wife; he never could get away from the poignancy of that phrase. His wife--his responsibility towards her--the old thought, eight years old, of all she had given up in exchanging her own life for his life--and what was she getting? He set himself, on their reunion, always to remember the advantage he had over her: that he _could_ reason out her attitude towards things; that she could not,--neither his attitude nor, what was more, her own. Now. What was this leading up to? "She did it bringing in your bicycle." Puzzling sometimes over passages with Mabel that with mysterious and surprising suddenness had plunged into scenes, he had whimsically envisaged how he had been, as it were, led blindfolded to the edge of a precipice, and then, _whizz!_ sent flying over on to the angry crags below.