Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett — Read

Not a sound in the house; nor outside the house. Not a clock nor a watch going in the house. Mr. Earlforward had listened interminably to get the time from the church, but without success. He knew only from the prolonged silence of the street that the hour must be very late. "Work! " he murmured to himself in the vast airless desert and void created by the death of Violet. "That's the one thing -- the one thing. " His faculty for compromising with destiny aroused itself for a supreme achievement. It was invincible. He would not think himself into hell or madness or inanition by yielding feebly to the frightful grief caused by the snatching away of that unique woman so solicitous about him, so sensible, so vivacious, so agreeable, so energetic, so enterprising, so ready to adopt his ideas -- and yet so independent. Her little tantrums -- how exquisite, girlish! There had always been a girl in her. The memory of her girlishness desolated him more than anything.

"Insufficient nourishment"? No! It could not have been that. Had he ever, on any occasion, in the faintest degree, discouraged her from satisfying her appetite? Or criticized her housekeeping accounts? No! Never had he interfered. Moreover she had plenty of money of her own and the absolutely unfettered use of it. He would give her such a funeral as had not been seen in Clerkenwell for many a year. The cost, of course, might be charged to her estate, but he would not allow that -- though, of course, it would all be the same in the end.