Bunting came back to the fire and looked down at his wife with mild
excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of
weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him.
He felt he could have shaken her!

Ellen had hardly taken the trouble to listen when he, Bunting, had
come back to bed that morning, and told her what the milkman had
said. In fact, she had been quite nasty about it, intimating that
she didn't like hearing about such horrid things.

It was a curious fact that though Mrs. Bunting enjoyed tales of
pathos and sentiment, and would listen with frigid amusement to
the details of a breach of promise action, she shrank from stories
of immorality or of physical violence. In the old, happy days,
when they could afford to buy a paper, aye, and more than one paper
daily, Bunting had often had to choke down his interest in some
exciting "case" or "mystery" which was affording him pleasant mental
relaxation, because any allusion to it sharply angered Ellen.

But now he was at once too dull and too miserable to care how she
felt.

Walking away from the window he took a slow, uncertain step towards
the door; when there he turned half round, and there came over his
close-shaven, round face the rather sly, pleading look with which
a child about to do something naughty glances at its parent.

But Mrs. Bunting remained quite still; her thin, narrow shoulders
just showed above the back of the chair on which she was sitting,
bolt upright, staring before her as if into vacancy.