The woman turned and walked swiftly, blindly, between the sunny roses, out of the garden, past the house with the blank, dark windows, through the sea-pebbled courtyard to the street. Hastening and blind, she went forward without hesitating, not knowing whither. Directly she came to the house she went upstairs, took off her hat, and sat down on the bed. It was as if some membrane had been torn in two in her, so that she was not an entity that could think and feel. She sat staring across at the window, where an ivy spray waved slowly up and down in the sea wind. There was some of the uncanny luminousness of the sunlit sea in the air. She sat perfectly still, without any being. She only felt she might be sick, and it might be blood that was loose in her torn entrails. She sat perfectly still and passive. After a time she heard the hard tread of her husband on the floor below, and, without herself changing, she registered his movement. She heard his rather disconsolate footsteps go out again, then his voice speaking, answering, growing cheery, and his solid tread drawing near. He entered, ruddy, rather pleased, an air of complacency about his alert figure. She moved stiffly. He faltered in his approach. “What’s the matter?” he asked a tinge of impatience in his voice. “Aren’t you feeling well?” This was torture to her. “Quite,” she replied. His brown eyes became puzzled and angry. “What is the matter?” he said. “Nothing.” He took a few strides, and stood obstinately, looking out of the window. “Have you run up against anybody?” he asked. “Nobody who knows me,” she said. His hands began to twitch. It exasperated him, that she was no more sensible of him than if he did not exist. Turning on her at length, driven, he asked: “Something has upset you hasn’t it?” “No, why?” she said neutral. He did not exist for her, except as an irritant. His anger rose, filling the veins in his throat. “It seems like it,” he said, making an effort not to show his anger, because there seemed no reason for it. He went away downstairs. She sat still on the bed, and with the residue of feeling left to her, she disliked him because he tormented her. The time went by. She could smell the dinner being served, the smoke of her husband’s pipe from the garden. But she could not move. She had no being. There was a tinkle of the bell. She heard him come indoors. And then he mounted the stairs again. At every step her heart grew tight in her. He opened the door. “Dinner is on the table,” he said.