“He was a sick man, Bel. You can’t blame him.” This was the tone Henry had always used about Edward, the tone of understanding, as if he were dealing with a patient. Always before, this tone had helped her because it made Edward seem unreal, not to be taken seriously, not to be allowed to invade their marriage, someone outside in a kind of self-made hospital in which his agony could be medically examined, but did not need to enter into anyone else. And when she said to Henry, “You’re my safety,” she always meant, you’re my safety against Edward, against pain.

“Why is he so important?” she asked almost angrily. “Why the papers?”

“He was a distinguished professor, I understand,” Henry answered gently. “And after all, he wrote all those books.”

“Nobody we know ever heard of him,” she answered bitterly.

“Well, it’s a different world, Bel. In his world he was pretty famous, you know that as well as I do.”

“Why didn’t he stick to what he knew about? Why did he have to come out here to campaign with Wallace? That’s all people here know about him.” She hated the harsh vulgar tone in her own voice, it was as if someone else were taking her over, an angry person she didn’t know, who frightened her.

“Well, we feel the same way about that, Bel, and there’s no point in going over it all again. He’s at peace now.”

“Yes, he’s at peace,” she said in her new bitter voice.

“Drink your cocoa, honey. You know you don’t really want to talk this way. It’s just the shock. Give it time.”

“Don’t say ‘take it easy’ again or I’ll scream.” She was caught in a spiral of anger which she couldn’t break. Henry was frowning into his cup, his lower lip thrust out a little. If you battered your head against this man, she felt, it would be like battering it against rock. And she felt that she was sitting opposite a stranger; it was as if Henry was so sure of himself that one element had been left out of him, and that he was so human just because he was really so inhuman—he had never heard the voice of anguish breaking through his flesh like sweat, the little creeping whispery scream of anguish. But I mustn’t go on like this, she thought. I must get out of this. It’s dangerous. “I’m sorry, Henry,” she said in a flat voice, “you must get some sleep—those operations.”