It was a mile and a quarter from the post office to the Dower House, and it was always his custom to give telegraph messengers who came to his house twopence, and he wanted very much to get rid of the telegraph girl, who stood expectantly before him holding her red bicycle.  He felt now very sick and strained; he had a conviction that if he did not by an effort maintain his bearing cool and dry he would howl aloud.  He felt in his pocket for money; there were some coppers and a shilling.  He pulled it all out together and stared at it.

He had an absurd conviction that this ought to be a sixpenny telegram.  The thing worried him.  He wanted to give the brat sixpence, and he had only threepence and a shilling, and he didn’t know what to do and his brain couldn’t think.  It would be a shocking thing to give her a shilling, and he couldn’t somehow give just coppers for so important a thing as Hugh’s death.  Then all this problem vanished and he handed the child the shilling.  She stared at him, inquiring, incredulous.  “Is there a reply, Sir, please?”

“No,” he said, “that’s for you.  All of it....  This is a peculiar sort of telegram....  It’s news of importance....”

As he said this he met her eyes, and had a sudden persuasion that she knew exactly what it was the telegram had told him, and that she was shocked at this gala-like treatment of such terrible news.  He hesitated, feeling that he had to say something else, that he was socially inadequate, and then he decided that at any cost he must get his face away from her staring eyes.  She made no movement to turn away.  She seemed to be taking him in, recording him, for repetition, greedily, with every fibre of her being.

He stepped past her into the garden, and instantly forgot about her existence....

Section 22

He had been thinking of this possibility for the last few weeks almost continuously, and yet now that it had come to him he felt that he had never thought about it before, that he must go off alone by himself to envisage this monstrous and terrible fact, without distraction or interruption.

He saw his wife coming down the alley between the roses.

He was wrenched by emotions as odd and unaccountable as the emotions of adolescence.  He had exactly the same feeling now that he had had when in his boyhood some unpleasant admission had to be made to his parents.  He felt he could not go through a scene with her yet, that he could not endure the task of telling her, of being observed.  He turned abruptly to his left.  He walked away as if he had not seen her, across his lawn towards the little summer-house upon a knoll that commanded the high road.  She called to him, but he did not answer....

He would not look towards her, but for a time all his senses were alert to hear whether she followed him.  Safe in the summer-house he could glance back.