What meant the pallor, the placid face, the candid brow, the pure eyes? What did she think during all these years? What did she think yesterday--to-day; what would she think to-morrow? He must find out. . . . And yet how could he get to know? She had been false to him, to that man, to herself; she was ready to be false--for him. Always false. She looked lies, breathed lies, lived lies--would tell lies--always--to the end of life! And he would never know what she meant. Never! Never! No one could. Impossible to know. He dropped his knife and fork, brusquely, as though by the virtue of a sudden illumination he had been made aware of poison in his plate, and became positive in his mind that he could never swallow another morsel of food as long as he lived. The dinner went on in a room that had been steadily growing, from some cause, hotter than a furnace. He had to drink. He drank time after time, and, at last, recollecting himself, was frightened at the quantity, till he perceived that what he had been drinking was water--out of two different wine glasses; and the discovered unconsciousness of his actions affected him painfully. He was disturbed to find himself in such an unhealthy state of mind. Excess of feeling--excess of feeling; and it was part of his creed that any excess of feeling was unhealthy--morally unprofitable; a taint on practical manhood. Her fault. Entirely her fault. Her sinful self-forgetfulness was contagious. It made him think thoughts he had never had before; thoughts disintegrating, tormenting, sapping to the very core of life--like mortal disease; thoughts that bred the fear of air, of sunshine, of men--like the whispered news of a pestilence.