Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

They went everywhere and did everything. An equal feverishness seemed to possess them both. Yet, all the while, she was seeing him vividly as she had never seen him before, as one seems to see the still and naked soul of a man lying in his coffin. She noticed that when he talked his conversation dealt solely with material things, objects and their value. He was all surface, facade, a human diagram, a piece of arithmetic. He did not seem capable of expressing any sentiment, or of seeing beauty, or of appreciating the innumerable movements of the great shadow-show. Æsthetically he was colour blind,--and in his feelings--such as they were-- fatally dumb. He had lost the language of normal manhood.

It shocked her. So did his renewed lavishness. He poured out money, and there was something in her that began to be pitifully offended by this lavishness. Could he not express himself in any other way? He sent her into shops and made her buy things, dresses, hats, jewellery, articles de luxe, useless things, extravagant superfluities. Once or twice she tried to protest-- "Val,--I don't want it," and almost he seemed angry--"Suppose I can give you what I want," but the real anger was against himself.