This was not reassuring to Mr Verloc, in whose view the newly created situation required from the two people most concerned in it calmness, decision, and other qualities incompatible with the mental disorder of passionate sorrow.

Mr Verloc was a humane man; he had come home prepared to allow every latitude to his wife's affection for her brother.
Only he did not understand either the nature or the whole extent of that sentiment.

And in this he was excusable, since it was impossible for him to understand it without ceasing to be himself.

He was startled and disappointed, and his speech conveyed it by a certain roughness of tone.
"You might look at a fellow," he observed after waiting a while.
As if forced through the hands covering Mrs Verloc's face the answer came, deadened, almost pitiful.
"I don't want to look at you as long as I live." "Eh?
What!" Mr Verloc was merely startled by the superficial and literal meaning of this declaration.

It was obviously unreasonable, the mere cry of exaggerated grief.