as to produce the effect of an intolerable uproar.  He wanted to end it, as one is anxious to interrupt an indiscreet confession; but with the memory of that laugh upstairs he dared not give her an occasion to open her lips.  Presently he heard her voice pronouncing in a calm tone some unimportant remark.  He detached his eyes from the centre of his plate and felt excited as if on the point of looking at a wonder.  And nothing could be more wonderful than her composure.  He was looking at the candid eyes, at the pure brow, at what he had seen every evening for years in that place; he listened to the voice that for five years he had heard every day.  Perhaps she was a little pale—­but a healthy pallor had always been for him one of her chief attractions.  Perhaps her face was rigidly set—­but that marmoreal impassiveness, that magnificent stolidity, as of a wonderful statue by some great sculptor working under the curse of the gods; that imposing, unthinking stillness of her features, had till then mirrored for him the tranquil dignity of a soul of which he had thought himself—­as a matter of course—­the inexpugnable possessor.  Those were the outward signs of her difference from the ignoble herd that feels, suffers, fails, errs—­but has no distinct value in the world except as a moral contrast to the prosperity of the elect.  He had been proud of her appearance.  It had the perfectly proper frankness of perfection—­and now he was shocked to see it unchanged.  She looked like this, spoke like this, exactly like this, a year ago, a month ago—­only yesterday when she. . . .  What went on within made no difference.  What did she think?  What meant the pallor, the placid face, the candid brow, the pure eyes?  What did she think during all these years?  What did she think yesterday—­to-day; what would she think to-morrow?  He must find out. . . .  And yet how could he get to know?  She had been false to him, to that man, to herself; she was ready to be false—­for him.  Always false.  She looked lies, breathed lies, lived lies—­would tell lies—­always—­to the end of life!  And he would never know what she meant.  Never!  Never!  No one could.  Impossible to know.

He dropped his knife and fork, brusquely, as though by the virtue of a sudden illumination he had been made aware of poison in his plate, and became positive in his mind that he could never swallow another morsel of food as long as he lived.  The dinner went on in a room that had been steadily growing, from some cause, hotter than a furnace.  He had to drink.  He drank time after time, and, at last, recollecting himself, was frightened at the quantity, till he perceived that what he had been drinking was water—­out of two different wine glasses; and the discovered unconsciousness of his actions affected him painfully.  He was disturbed to find himself in such an unhealthy state of mind.  Excess of feeling—­excess of feeling; and it was part of his creed that any excess of feeling was unhealthy—­morally unprofitable; a taint on practical manhood.  Her fault.  Entirely her fault.  Her sinful self-forgetfulness was contagious.  It made him think thoughts he had never had before; thoughts disintegrating, tormenting, sapping to the very core of life—­like mortal disease; thoughts that bred the fear of air, of sunshine, of men—­like the whispered news of a pestilence.