the stigma.

The child's leg was saved: but the knee was locked stiff. The fear now
was lest the lower leg should wither, or cease to grow. There must be
long-continued massage and treatment, daily treatment, even when the
child left the nursing home. And the whole of the expense was borne by
the grandfather.

Egbert now had no real home. Winifred with the children and nurse was
tied to the little flat in London. He could not live there: he could not
contain himself. The cottage was shut-up--or lent to friends. He went
down sometimes to work in his garden and keep the place in order. Then
with the empty house around him at night, all the empty rooms, he felt
his heart go wicked. The sense of frustration and futility, like some
slow, torpid snake, slowly bit right through his heart. Futility,
futility: the horrible marsh-poison went through his veins and killed
him.

As he worked in the garden in the silence of day he would listen for a
sound. No sound. No sound of Winifred from the dark inside of the
cottage: no sound of children's voices from the air, from the common,
from the near distance. No sound, nothing but the old dark marsh-venomous
atmosphere of the place. So he worked spasmodically through the day, and
at night made a fire and cooked some food alone.

He was alone. He himself cleaned the cottage and made his bed. But his
mending he did not do. His shirts were slit on the shoulders, when he had
been working, and the white flesh showed through. He would feel the air
and the spots of rain on his exposed flesh. And he would look again
across the common, where the dark, tufted gorse was dying to seed, and