He looked across the room at her and was instantly surprised by the
strangest feeling. He was not, in his daily life, conscious of "feelings"
of any sort--that was not his way. But the events of the past two days
seemed to bring him suddenly into a new contact with real life, as though,
having lived in a balloon all this time, he had been suddenly bumped out
of it with a jerk and found Mother Earth with a terrible bang. He would
have told you a week ago that there was nothing about his wife that he did
not know and nothing about his own feelings towards her--and yet, after
all, the most that he had known was to have no especial feelings towards
her of any kind.
But to-day had been beyond possible question the most horrible day he had
ever known, and it might be that the very horror of it was to force him to
look upon everything on earth with new eyes. It had at least the immediate
effect now of showing his wife to him as part of himself, as some one,
therefore, hurt as he was, smirched and soiled and abused as he, needing
care and kindness as he had never known her to need it before.
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