"If I go in and speak to her, what is there for me to say?" he
thought, overcome by his horror of any uncontrolled emotion. "We
will merely go over the old complaints, the endless explanations.
She will probably weep like a child, and I shall feel a brute
when I look on and keep silent. In the first place, if I speak to
her, what is there for me to say? If I simply beg her to stop
crying, or if I rush in and urge her to marry Jim Weatherby
to-morrow, what good can come of either course? She doesn't wait
for my consent to the marriage, for she is as old as I am, and
knows her own heart much better than I know mine. It is true that
she is too beautiful to waste away like this, but how can I
prevent it, or what is there for me to do?"

Again came the impulse to go in and fold her in his arms, but
before he had taken the first step he yielded, as always, to his
strange reserve, and he realised that if he entered it would be
but to assume his customary unconcern, from the shelter of which
he would probably make a few commonplace remarks on trivial
subjects. The emotional situation would be ignored by them all,
he knew; they would treat it absolutely as if it had no
existence, as if its voice was not speaking to them in the
silence, and they would break their bread and drink their coffee
in apparent unconsciousness that supper was not the single thing
that engrossed their thoughts. And all the time they would be
face to face with the knowledge that they had demanded that Lila
should sacrifice her life.

Presently Cynthia came out and called him, and he went in
carelessly and sat down at the table. Lila left the window and
slipped into her place, and when Tucker joined them she cut up