"There you are! I'll keep the knife. Then you can't get mixed up."
And Darius ate the sausage with the fork alone. His intelligence had
failed to master the original problem presented to it. He ate steadily
for a few moments, and then the tears began to roll down his cheek, and
he ate no more.
This incident, so simple, so unexpected, and so dramatic, caused the
most acute distress. And its effect was disconcerting in the highest
degree. It reminded everybody that what Darius suffered from was
softening of the brain. For long he had been a prisoner in the house
and garden. For long he had been almost mute. And now, just after a
visit which usually acted upon him as a tonic, he had begun to lose the
skill to feed himself. Little by little he was demonstrating, by his
slow declension from it, the wonder of the standard of efficiency
maintained by the normal human being.
Edwin and Maggie avoided one another, even in their glances. Each
affected the philosophical, seeking to diminish the significance of the
episode. But neither succeeded. Of the two years allotted to Darius,
one had gone. What would the second be?
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