My mind was occupied by anxiety for my wife.  I figured her at
Leatherhead, terrified, in danger, mourning me already as a dead man.
I paced the rooms and cried aloud when I thought of how I was cut off
from her, of all that might happen to her in my absence.  My cousin I
knew was brave enough for any emergency, but he was not the sort of
man to realise danger quickly, to rise promptly.  What was needed now
was not bravery, but circumspection.  My only consolation was to
believe that the Martians were moving London-ward and away from her.
Such vague anxieties keep the mind sensitive and painful.  I grew very
weary and irritable with the curate's perpetual ejaculations; I tired
of the sight of his selfish despair.  After some ineffectual
remonstrance I kept away from him, staying in a room--evidently a
children's schoolroom--containing globes, forms, and copybooks.  When
he followed me thither, I went to a box room at the top of the house
and, in order to be alone with my aching miseries, locked myself in.