Presently she came to an end, soothed the child and cleared away the
breakfast-table. She left the newspaper, littered with curls, spread
upon the hearthrug. At last her husband gathered it up and put it at
the back of the fire. She went about her work with closed mouth and very
quiet. Morel was subdued. He crept about wretchedly, and his meals were
a misery that day. She spoke to him civilly, and never alluded to what
he had done. But he felt something final had happened.
Afterwards she said she had been silly, that the boy's hair would have
had to be cut, sooner or later. In the end, she even brought herself to
say to her husband it was just as well he had played barber when he
did. But she knew, and Morel knew, that that act had caused something
momentous to take place in her soul. She remembered the scene all her
life, as one in which she had suffered the most intensely.
This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of her
love for Morel. Before, while she had striven against him bitterly, she
had fretted after him, as if he had gone astray from her.
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