THE WINDOWas from one branch to another, from one red and whiteflower to another, until a little sound roused her — herhusband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a sec-ond; but they did not want to speak to each other.They had nothing to say, but something seemed,nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, itwas the power of it, it was the tremendous humour,she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don’t inter-rupt me, he seemed to be saying, don’t say anything;just sit there. He went on reading. His lips twitched.It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot allthe little rubs and digs of the evening, and how itbored him unutterably to sit still while people ateand drank interminably, and his being so irritablewith his wife and so touchy and minding when theypassed his books over as if they didn’t exist at all. Butnow, he felt, it didn’t matter a damn who reached Z(if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Some-body would reach it — if not he, then another. Thisman’s strength and sanity, his feeling for straightfor-ward simple things, these fishermen, the poor oldcrazed creature in Mucklebackit’s cottage, made himfeel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he feltroused and triumphant and could not choke back histears. Raising the book a little to hide his face he letthem fall and shook his head from side to side andforgot himself completely (but not one or two reflec-tions about morality and French and English novelsand Scott’s hands being tied but his view perhaps be-ing as true as the other view) forgot his bothers andfailures in poor Steenie’s drowning and Mucklebackit’ssorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishingdelight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.141
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