He saw it clearly. He had been sacrificed to his mother’s selfishness. Nothing but that had doomed him to his humiliating dependence, his poverty, his intolerable celibacy. He found himself brooding over it, going back and back to it, with a certain gratification, as if it justified him. His mind was appeased by this righteous resentment. When the remembrance of his mother’s beauty and sweetness rushed at him and accused him he turned from it to his brooding. He had begun to talk, to say things about his mother. Put into spoken words his grievance seemed more real; it acquired validity. He had felt so safe. His mother couldn’t hear him. She would never know what he thought about her; he would have died rather than let her know. And he had only talked to Effie. Talking to his wife was no worse than thinking to himself. After all he had gone through, he felt he was entitled to that relief. It was June, a hot, close evening before lamplight; they were sitting together in the drawing-room, Effie in his mother’s chair and he at his piano in the recess on the other side of the fireplace. And there was something that Effie said when he had stopped playing and had turned to her, smiling. “Wilfrid—are you happy?” “Of course I’m happy.” “No, but—really?” “Really. Absolutely. You make me happy.” “Do I? I’m so glad. You see, when I married you I was afraid I couldn’t. It was so hard to come after your mother.” He winced. “How do you mean? You don’t come ‘after’ her.” “I mean, after all she was to you. After all she did. Your life with her was so perfect.” “If it’s any consolation to you, Effie, it wasn’t.” “Wasn’t?” “No. Anything but.” “Oh, Wilfrid!” He seemed to her to be uttering blasphemy. “It’s better you should know it. My dear mother didn’t understand me in the least. My whole up-bringing was a ghastly blunder. If I’d been let live a decent life, like any other boy, like any other man, I might have been good for something. But she wouldn’t let me. She pretended there was something the matter with me when there wasn’t, so that she could keep me dependent on her.” “Wilfrid _dear_, it may have been a blunder and it may have been ghastly—” “It was.” “But it was only her love for you.” “A very selfish sort of love, Effie.” “Oh _don’t_,” she cried. “Don’t. She’s _dead_, Wilfrid.” “I’m not likely to forget it.” “You talk as if you’d forgotten— If the dead knew—” If the dead knew— “If they knew,” she said, “how we spoke about them, how we thought—” If the dead knew— If his mother had heard him; if she knew what he had been thinking; if she knew that he had wished her dead and that his wish had killed her— If the dead knew— “Happily for us and them, they don’t know,” he said. And he began playing again. He was aware that Effie had risen and was now seated at the writing-table. As he played he had his back to the writing-table and the door.