The old woman walked with slow steps along the paths of the garden, carefully examining each separate rose with her grey eyes. Her legs seemed to move with difficulty along the narrow gravel-paths that wound through the front-garden; and her frame was bent, as though deformed. In a wicker-work chair on the verandah sat the tall, old figure of the husband, his ivory forehead bulging above the pages of the newspaper which he held in his large, shrivelled hands. . . .
Evening fell. A nameless grey melancholy fell from the pale summer sky over the country-roads, along which the peaceful villas faded into the shadows of their gardens. The old woman looked up at the sky, looked out over the road, with her hand shading her eyes, walked on again, slowly and painfully, carefully examining each separate rose. . . . Then she went back to the house:
“It is getting cold, Hendrik; don’t stay out too long.”
“No.”
But the old man remained sitting where he was. The old woman went in, wandered through the sitting-room and the dining-room. She passed her pocket-handkerchief lightly over the furniture, looking to see if there was any dust on it; and, as the parlour-maid had cleared the table, she pulled the
