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Show -9- if there were satisfaction in changes which confirmed her predictions. She had been right all along, she said to herself, nothing could be done. She began to grow careless of warnings; she cooked with butter now, and fed him eggs. It had made no difference, she said to herself, what was the use of such futile precautions? Odd little accidents, for which she could find no explanation, began to occur: when he started to jog she misplaced his sweatpants, misset the alarm clock, lost one of his sneakers. He suggested a health club; she pronounced it too expensive. She fed him gravies and rich desserts, saying that she was tired of cooking lean, plain meals, and though he might earlier have protested, temptation overpowered him, and he ate what she gave him. She began to ask about his blood pressure, and insisted he check it every week. "Don't let it worry you," he smiled. She could not answer. She thought of other precautions she must take. She had let the children become the chief delight of her husband's life, and he played long and vigorously with them. Now she began to keep the children away from him, sending the older ones for weekends with friends in the country, feeding the youngest separately in the kitchen. She encouraged them all to play at girls' games and not let their father join. She told herself that she must break her daughters' closeness to their father, so that when the end came it would shock them less; for their own good, they must learn to live without him. She could not tell him what she was doing. He saw that his daughters were growing away from him, but he thought it the natural course of coming |