He lays down the empty pipe he has been twirling in his fingers, and obeys her.
‘Paul!’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘I cannot talk much,’ she says, in her pretty foreign accent
It has been the one ambition of her mind during these three or four years to speak English like an Englishwoman, and she has very nearly succeeded, only there is still a rhythm left which is charming to hear.
‘I shall not be with you long.’
‘What?’ says Paul. ‘Nonsense, sweetheart! that’s a mere sick fancy. Chase it away.’
‘It is no fancy,’ says Annette—‘no fancy at all. I heard the doctor this morning. They did not think I could hear, and he was talking with the housekeeper. He said he feared the worst. You know what that means, Paul.’
What should he say? A man of ardent blood and active brain does not live with a jelly-fish for sole home society for a year or two without a certain weariness, yet his manhood scorned him for it, and even if passion had never been alive at all there was tenderness and the camaraderie which comes of close association. He kissed her, and he lied in kissing her, but it was not a wicked or an evil lie.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘this is all fancy. You will be well and strong again in a month or two. I have talked to the doctor, and I can assure you he has no sort of fear about you. Look here, now. Darco is coming down to-morrow, and we shall revise our play. Within a week it shall be finished, and then we will have you packed carefully in cotton-wool and will carry you back to Paris. Or if you think it will be too cold in Paris we will take train to Nice, and pass the winter there.’