"You wouldn't have liked that!"
"She is better." Emptiness was becoming peopled, and she remembered Mildred Caniper in bed, and the nurse smiling when she meant to be sympathetically sad, and Miriam, pitiful under scolding, but George was only the large figure that blocked the future: he was not real, though he talked and must be answered.
"I was coming to ask: do you hear?"
"You know now."
"But there's more. Who's the old chap who drove up tonight? Your uncle, isn't it?"
Her mind, which had lain securely in her body out of reach of hurt, was slowly being drawn into full consciousness; but he had to repeat his words before she answered them, and then she spoke with a haughtiness to which Miriam had accustomed him.
"So you have been watching?"
"Why not?" he asked defiantly. "I've got to watch. Besides," he became clumsy, shy, and humble, "I was waiting to see you."
"I'm here."
"But you're—you're like a dead thing. That night, in my room, you were alive enough. You sat there, with your mouth open, a little—I could see your teeth, and your eyes—they shone."