She made no answer.
"You see," said Louis, with a half-sneering triumph, "I knew jolly
well it wasn't open. So did old Batchgrew know, too."
She shut her lips together, went decisively to the mantelpiece, struck
a match, and lit the stove. Like the patent gas-burner downstairs,
the stove often had to be extinguished after the first lighting and
lighted again with a second and different kind of explosion. And so
it was now. She flung down the match pettishly into the hearth.
Throughout the whole operation she sniffed convulsively, to prevent a
new fit of sobbing. Her peignoir being very near to the purple-green
flames that folded themselves round the asbestos of the stove, she
reflected that the material was probably inflammable, and that a
careless movement might cause it to be ignited. "And not a bad thing,
either!" she said to herself. Then, without looking at all towards
the bed, she lit the spirit-lamp in order to make tea. The sniffing
continued, as she went through the familiar procedure.
The water would not boil, demonstrating the cruel truth of proverbs.
She sat down and, gazing into the stove, now a rich red, ignored the
saucepan. The dry heat from the stove burnt her ankles and face.
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