Coming down with the children to lunch the next day, Miriam found the room dark and chill in the bright midday. It was as if it were empty. But if it had been empty it would have been beautiful in the still light and tranquil. There was a dark cruel tide in the room, she sought in vain for a foothold. A loud busy voice was talking from Mr. Corrie’s place at the head of the table. Mr. Staple-Craven, busy with cold words to hide the truth. He paused as the nursery trio came in and settled at the table and then shouted softly and suddenly at Mrs. Corrie, “What’s Corrie having?” “Biscuits,” chirped Mrs. Corrie eagerly, “biscuits and sally in the study.” She sat forward, gathering herself to disperse the gloom. But Mrs. Craven’s deep voice drowned her unspoken gaieties ... ah--he’s not gone away, thought Miriam rapidly, he’s in the house.... “Best thing for biliousness,” gonged Mrs. Craven, and Mr. Craven busily resumed. “It’s only the fisherman who knows anything, anything whatever about the silver stream. Necessarily. Necessarily. It is the--the _concentration_, the--the _absorption_ of the passion that enables him to see. Er, the fisherman, the poet-tantamount; exchangeable terms. Fishing is, indeed one might say----” The men of the party were devouring their food with the air of people just about to separate to fulfil urgent engagements. They bent and gobbled busily and cast smouldering glances about the table, as if with their eyes they would suggest important mysteries brooding above their animated muzzles. Miriam’s stricken eyes sought their foreheads for relief. Smooth brows and neatly brushed hair above; but the smooth motionless brows were ramparts of hate; pure murderous hate. That’s men, she said, with a sudden flash of certainty, that’s men as they are, when they are opposed, when they are real. All the rest is pretence. Her thoughts flashed forward to a final clear issue of opposition, with a husband. Just a cold blank hating forehead and neatly brushed hair above it. If a man doesn’t understand or doesn’t agree he’s just a blank bony conceitedly thinking, absolutely condemning forehead, a face below, going on eating--and going off somewhere. Men are all hard angry bones; always thinking something, only one thing at a time and unless that is agreed to, they murder. My husband shan’t kill me.... I’ll shatter his conceited brow--_make_ him see ... two sides to every question ... a million sides ... no questions, only sides ... always changing. Men argue, think they prove things; their foreheads recover--cool and calm. Damn them all--all men. 7 “Fee ought to be out here,” said Mrs. Corrie, moving her basket chair to face away from the sun.