THE WINDOWpopped her head in now and again and saw to thefire. That was the country he liked best, over there;those sandhills dwindling away into darkness. Onecould walk all day without meeting a soul. There wasnot a house scarcely, not a single village for miles onend. One could worry things out alone. There werelittle sandy beaches where no one had been since thebeginning of time. The seals sat up and looked at you.It sometimes seemed to him that in a little house outthere, alone — he broke off, sighing. He had no right.The father of eight children — he reminded himself.And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish asingle thing altered. Andrew would be a better manthan he had been. Prue would be a beauty, her mo-ther said. They would stem the flood a bit. That wasa good bit of work on the whole — his eight children.They showed he did not damn the poor little universeentirely, for on an evening like this, he thought, look-ing at the land dwindling away, the little island seemedpathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.

‘Poor little place,’ he murmured with a sigh.

She heard him. He said the most melancholy things,but she noticed that directly he had said them he al-ways seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had saidhalf what he said, she would have blown her brainsout by now.

It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she saidto him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectlylovely evening. And what was he groaning about, sheasked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessedwhat he was thinking — he would have written betterbooks if he had not married.83
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