"Yes, thank you, Thérèse, I rather think this bout isn't going to amount to much after all. It looks like a false alarm."
"Ah, that would be too marvellous! Perhaps you have a very strong—what do you call it?—constitution. Dido, darling, will you be an angel and fasten this strap for me? Aline is out on an errand."
She leant over so that her sister-in-law need not rise. Her dead-black, filmy gown had wide transparent sleeves that fell back to show her white arms, she wore no ornaments except her row of lustrous pearls. She looked fragile and lovely, her hair loosely waved with the artlessness of a child's, her grey eyes with their flecks of gold wide and clear, like the eyes of a beautiful Persian cat.
"Thérèse," Roger said abruptly. "Sit down, I want to suggest something to you."
She patted the old lady's shoulder for thanks and sat down in the blue damask bergère beside the fire, looking up at him expectantly.
"Yes, certainly; what is it?"
"Thérèse, you mustn't misunderstand what I am going to say. It's awfully difficult. The fact is, I've only just realised you are keeping Sartorius here on my account. You'll think me incredibly stupid, but I supposed he was staying on as a—a guest."
"Well?" she returned, quite tranquilly, though watching him closely, he thought.
Mechanically she put out her hand to take a cigarette from the table, keeping her eyes on his. He bent forward with a match for her, and the perfume from her hair, her skin, her dress met him in a cloying wave. Why, in spite of all, did he shrink from that scent? He couldn't explain it, it wasn't exactly unpleasant….
"Well," he replied, finding it hard to proceed, "now that I do understand, I must really beg you to get rid of him. I'm not ill enough to need any physician's undivided attention, and besides"—he hesitated, then took the plunge—"I feel I've got to get away. Since Father's funeral this house seems to get on my nerves. I'm horribly depressed. Do you know what I mean?"