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And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistful fashion.

No. Stephen could not understand it.

There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it. And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. The fascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matter with her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knew differently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidant of Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. Then Stephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, he swore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continue with his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his query why she was pale, she said she didn’t know.

He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.

For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was the same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and was doing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keep him alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamous brutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave her a widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief, that she had done with him.

When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, and even ingratiatingly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and added, “but you know you did say that you were hiding nothing from me.”

“Of course,” she retorted, “because I was.” Her arguments were usually on this high plane of logic.

“And you ought not to be so superstitious,” Stephen proceeded.

“Well,” said she, with truth, “one never knows.” And she wiped away a tear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. “And anyhow my only anxiety was for you.”

“Do you really believe what that woman said?” Stephen asked.

“Well,” she repeated, “one never knows.”

“Because if you do, I’ll tell you something.”

“What?” Vera demanded.

At this juncture Stephen committed an error of tactics. He might have let her continue in the fear of his death, and thus remained on velvet (subject to occasional outbreaks) for the rest of his life. But he gave himself utterly away.

“She told me I should live till I was ninety,” said he. “So you can’t be a widow for quite half a century, and you’ll be eighty yourself then.”

IV

Within twenty-four hours she was at him about the balcony.

“The summer will be lovely,” she said, in reply to his argument about climate.

“Rubbish,” she said, in reply to his argument about safety.

“Who cares for your old breakfast-room?” she said, in reply to his argument about darkness at breakfast.

“We will have trees planted on that side–big elms,” she said, in reply to his argument about the smoke of the Five Towns spoiling the view.

Whereupon Stephen definitely and clearly enunciated that he should not build a balcony.

“Oh, but you must!” she protested.

“A balcony is quite impossible,” said Stephen, with his firmest masculinity.

“You’ll see if it’s impossible,” said she, “when I’m that widow.”

The curious may be interested to know that she has already begun to plant trees.