He turned his back on her and walked quickly away from her, but not before he had seen her hand tighten and draw back to the child, and not before he had seen the look of expectancy on her face turn to a hatred so forlorn that for a moment it looked as though her face had been cut off. She thought he had done it on purpose. She thought he had turned back on purpose to disappoint her. But she must have known the funeral was passing. She had not been looking at the funeral at all. She had been looking at him and thinking of what she was going to get. She had seen him pass her and she had seen him turn back to her. She thought he would do a thing like that. She thought he was the sort of man who would do a thing like that. He thought he would turn back again, and this time quickly give her something, but shame kept him going and he walked more and more quickly away from her. A woman passing glanced at him, and he realized he had been walking along muttering and rubbing his eyes, and what he had been saying was “I wouldn’t do the like of that. I wouldn’t do the like of that.” All the mourners must have seen him, hurrying along making faces like a lunatic. He wished he had given the woman something; it would have been easy enough to give her something. There was no need for her to beg, there were plenty of places she could go to, where she would get help, but all the same she was pitiable standing there, and she had said nothing to him and she had not called names after him, as many others would have done in her place. But how could she think he was the kind of man who would play a trick like that? He should have explained to her that he was looking at the funeral, but she would still not have understood why he gave her nothing. To pass her by and not give her anything, all right, but to turn back to look at her and still give her nothing. It must have seemed that he was mocking her or that he had something worse in mind. How could she have thought that of him? She held the child as if it was threatened. She had both arms around the child the way Rose used to hold John, as if there was nothing in the world but that one baby. The way she held the child against her body was a reproach and a warning to everyone who came near it. Women like that were impossible to deal with. They would give themselves heart and soul to what they knew must go. There was no reasoning with them. All the mathematicians in the world could kill themselves working, and those women would not even look over their shoulders to see what was happening. They would learn nothing and they would see nothing and they would care for nothing as long as they had the child. If you told them they were ignorant and reckless, risking themselves, they would not hear you. They would not be able to hear you. All the history and mathematics and architecture in the world were nothing to them alongside the history and the mathematics and the architecture of that one face. You could talk yourself black in the face and they would only wonder if it was time to change the baby. And they would be silent. You wouldn’t get a direct answer out of them for love or money. You wouldn’t get any kind of an answer out of them. They would not speak to tell the truth. The truth wasn’t in them. You could walk away from them and leave them there and they would never call after you or say a word, but they would look at you until you remembered them and could not forget them and could not forget that they were looking after you the way that woman was looking after him now. How could she have thought he was the kind of a man who would do a thing like that?