She sat up, taking her hand from his arm.
“Indeed, I should not be as lonely here as I am at Harrogate,” she said. “We don’t know anybody there, and if you think of it, I am really alone most of the time. It is different for you, because it is doing you good, and, as I say, you are bicycling with Elsie all the afternoon, and you play chess together in the evening.”
A shade of trouble and perplexity came over the doctor’s face; the indictment, for it was hardly less than that, was as well-ordered and digested as if it had been prepared for a forensic argument. And the calm, passionless voice went on.
“Think of my day there,” she said, going into orderly detail. “After breakfast you go off to your baths, and I have to sit in that dreadful sitting-room while they clear the things away. Even a hotel would be more amusing than those furnished lodgings; one could look at the people going in and out. Or if I go for a stroll in the morning, I get tired, and must rest in the afternoon. You come in to lunch, and go off with Elsie afterwards. That is quite right; the exercise is good for you, but what is the use of my being there? There is nobody for me to go to see, nobody comes to see me. Then we have dinner, and I have the excitement of learning where you and Elsie have been bicycling. You two play chess after dinner, and I have the excitement of being told who has won. Here, at any rate, I can sit in a room that doesn’t smell of dinner, or I can sit in the garden. I have my own books and things about me, and there are people I know whom I can see and talk to.”
He got up, and began walking up and down the path in front of the bench where they had been sitting, his kindly soul in some perplexity.
“Nothing wrong, little woman?” he asked.
“Certainly not. Why should you think that? I imagine there is reason enough in what I have told you. I do get so bored there, Wilfred. And I hate being bored. I am sure it is not good for me, either. Try to picture my life there, and see how utterly different it is from yours. Besides, as I say, it is doing you good all the time, and as you yourself said, you welcome the thought of that horrible smelling water.”
He still shuffled up and down in the dusk. That, too, got on her nerves.
“Pray sit down, Wilfred,” she said. “Your walking about like that confuses me. And surely you can say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to me. If you insist on my going with you, I shall go. But I shall think it very unreasonable of you.”
“But I can’t say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ like that, little woman,” he said. “I don’t imagine you have thought how dull Riseborough will be during August. Everybody goes away, I believe.”