On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his
latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's
gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat,
he hurried to the drawing-room.
The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar-logs
burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual
corner on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She
did not move, and did not seem to see him.
"So you've come back?" he said. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"
Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed
as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her
eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of
an owl.
Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange
resemblance to a captive owl, bunched fir its soft feathers against the
wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though
she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer
any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.
"So you've come back," he repeated.
She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her
motionless figure.
Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he
understood.
She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to
turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled
in the fur, was enough.
He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she
had seen the report of his death--perhaps, like himself, had bought a
paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.
She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to
be free of--and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he
longed to cry: "Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take
away that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft--before I crush it. Get
out of my sight; never let me see you again!"
And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move
away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to
awake--rise and go out into the dark and cold, without a thought of him,
without so much as the knowledge of his presence.
Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No; stay
there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair
on the other side of the hearth.