"What whim?"

"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her going
about so much with Martin."

Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love
lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.

"The Sanitist?" he said; "ah! Well?"

"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had a
telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."

She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He
took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real
affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other
people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally
disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder
and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a
certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in
the Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive
and assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, "No, I'm
damned!"

In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude
towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of the
population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm damned!"
Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he could be
damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with something, and