.

." He looked up at his wife, and whatever he was going to add remained unspoken.

She was staring at him with her big, slanting eyes, that seemed to him twice their natural size.

The child, its dirty little face pressed to its mother's shoulder, was sleeping peacefully.

The deep silence of the house was not broken, but rather accentuated, by the low mutter of the cockatoo, now very still on its perch.