Mrs. Delarayne, if anything more regal and more youthful than ever, but certainly showing signs of having taken violent exercise along a chalky thoroughfare, stepped eagerly towards Lord Henry.
"My dear Lord Henry," she began, "so good of you to be in only to me. But oh, I felt I must see you before leaving town."
She turned and shook hands with St. Maur, and Lord Henry moved an easy chair in her direction.
"Oh, that's right; give me a chair, quick!" she gasped. "I'm broken—broken in body and spirit."
Lord Henry asked the expected question.
"Only this," she said, "that my life soon won't be worth a moment's purchase."
"You are tired," suggested her host. "You don't look after yourself."
"It isn't that," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined. "Nobody takes greater care of themselves than I do. I go to bed every night at ten o'clock precisely, and read until half-past two. What more can I do?"
Lord Henry blinked rapidly, and surveyed her with an air of deep interest. "And you say you are leaving town?" he enquired.
"Yes, I'm taking my family to Brineweald, you know. It is my annual penance, my yearly sacrificial offering to my children. It lasts just six weeks. By the end of it, of course, I am at death's door; but I feel that I can then face the remaining forty-six weeks of gross selfishness with a clean conscience and a brazen face."