How good it must be to lie in a sanatorium, in a white bed between white walls, surrounded by sympathy and flowers. Visitors would come, everyone would be kind to her, and behind the clouds of suffering the great, kindly sun of restoration to health would already be dawning in the distance. If you were in physical pain at least you could groan out loud, but she had to keep acting the tragi-comic part of a woman in good health and good spirits. Every day, almost every hour, faced her with new and terrible situations. She had to smile and look happy while all her nerves were on edge, and no one could even guess at the constant strain of this assumed cheerfulness, the heroic strength that she exerted in the daily yet useless violence she did herself.

Only one of all the people around her seemed, she vaguely felt, to guess something of the terrors she was suffering, and he did so only because he was watching her. She felt sure, and that certainty forced her to be doubly careful, that her husband was thinking about her all the time, just as she was thinking about him. They manoeuvred day and night as if circling around one another, each trying to guess the other’s secret while keeping their own safe. He too had changed recently. His menacing severity in those first few days of inquisition had given way to his own manner of showing kindness and concern, and she was instinctively reminded of the days when they had first been engaged. He was treating her like an invalid, with a care and anxiety on her behalf that bewildered her, because such undeserved love made her feel ashamed. On the other hand she also feared it, because it could be just a trick to get her secret out of her at some sudden, unexpected moment. Since the night when he had heard her call out in her sleep, and the day when he had seen the letter in her hands, his distrust had seemed to turn to sympathy. He was trying to win her confidence with a tenderness that sometimes reassured her and made her feel like yielding to him, only to return to her suspicions of him the next moment. Was it just a trick, the tempting trap set by an investigating judge for the defendant, a snare to catch her confidence? If she confessed, would it be like setting out along a drawbridge which was then suddenly raised, leaving her defenceless in his power. Or did he too feel that this state of heightened watchfulness, waiting and listening, was unendurable, was his sympathy strong enough for him to suffer secretly because of her own suffering, which must be getting more visible daily? She felt, with a strange tremor, that at times he was almost offering her the words that would bring release, making it enticingly easy for her to confess. She understand his intentions, and was grateful for his kindness. But she also felt that with her stronger liking for him, her sense of shame was also growing, and it kept a sterner guard on her tongue than his distrust had done before.

Just once at this time he spoke to her very clearly, looking her in the eye. She had come home to hear loud voices as she entered the front hall—her husband’s, firm and energetic, and the scolding, loquacious voice of the governess, as well as tears and sobbing from the children. Her first feeling was one of alarm. She was always apprehensive when she heard voices raised, or there was some kind of domestic upset in the household. Fear was her reaction to everything out of the ordinary, and this time it was fear that the letter had already arrived and her secret was out. Whenever she opened the door and came in these days, she looked round at the faces she saw and wondered whether something had happened in her absence; had the catastrophe come down on her while she was out? This time, as she soon realised, much to her relief, it was only a quarrel between the children, and a small improvised trial was in progress. A few days ago an aunt had brought the boy a toy, a brightly painted little horse. His envious younger sister didn’t like her own present so much, and was incensed. She had tried in vain to stake a claim to the little horse, behaving so wilfully that the boy had said she wasn’t even to touch his toy. That had led first to loud protests from the child and then to a cowed, sullen, obstinate silence. Next morning, however, the little horse had disappeared without trace, and all the boy’s efforts to find it were in vain, until by chance the lost toy was finally discovered in pieces in the stove, its wooden parts broken, its skin ripped off and its stuffing removed. Suspicion naturally fell on the little girl—the boy had run to his father in tears to complain of his naughty sister, who couldn’t help trying to justify herself, and so the interrogation began.

Irene felt a pang of envy. Why did the children always take their troubles to her husband, never to her? They had always confided their quarrels and complaints to him, and until now she had been happy to be free of these petty squabbles, but suddenly she wanted to be told about them, because she sensed that there was love and trust in such confidences.

The little trial was soon over. The girl denied the charge at first, although with her eyes timidly lowered, and the way her shoulders were shaking gave her away.