down by the shade fell dazzlingly on the white pillow sunk by the weight
of her head reposing with closed eyes and dark hair done up in several
plaits for the night. She woke up with the sound of her name in her
ears, and saw her husband standing over her.

"Winnie! Winnie!"

At first she did not stir, lying very quiet and looking at the cash-box
in Mr Verloc's hand. But when she understood that her brother was
"capering all over the place downstairs" she swung out in one sudden
movement on to the edge of the bed. Her bare feet, as if poked through
the bottom of an unadorned, sleeved calico sack buttoned tightly at neck
and wrists, felt over the rug for the slippers while she looked upward
into her husband's face.

"I don't know how to manage him," Mr Verloc explained peevishly. "Won't
do to leave him downstairs alone with the lights."

She said nothing, glided across the room swiftly, and the door closed
upon her white form.

Mr Verloc deposited the cash-box on the night table, and began the
operation of undressing by flinging his overcoat on to a distant chair.
His coat and waistcoat followed. He walked about the room in his
stockinged feet, and his burly figure, with the hands worrying nervously
at his throat, passed and repassed across the long strip of looking-glass
in the door of his wife's wardrobe. Then after slipping his braces off
his shoulders he pulled up violently the venetian blind, and leaned his
forehead against the cold window-pane--a fragile film of glass stretched
between him and the enormity of cold, black, wet, muddy, inhospitable