The plural pronoun struck me, and involuntarily I looked up at Mrs. Grancy’s portrait. Line by line I saw my fear reflected in it. It was the face of a woman who knows that her husband is dying. My heart stood still at the thought of what Claydon had done.
Grancy had followed my glance. “Yes, it’s changed her,” he said quietly. “For months, you know, it was touch and go with me—we had a long fight of it, and it was worse for her than for me.” After a pause he added: “Claydon has been very kind; he’s so busy nowadays that I seldom see him, but when I sent for him the other day he came down at once.”
I was silent and we spoke no more of Grancy’s illness; but when I took leave it seemed like shutting him in alone with his death-warrant.
The next time I went down to see him he looked much better. It was a Sunday and he received me in the library, so that I did not see the portrait again. He continued to improve and toward spring we began to feel that, as he had said, he might yet travel a long way without being towed.
One evening, on returning to town after a visit which had confirmed my sense of reassurance, I found Claydon dining alone at the club. He asked me to join him and over the coffee our talk turned to his work.
“If you’re not too busy,” I said at length, “you ought to make time to go down to Grancy’s again.”
He looked up quickly. “Why?” he asked.
“Because he’s quite well again,” I returned with a touch of cruelty. “His wife’s prognostications were mistaken.”
Claydon stared at me a moment. “Oh, she knows,” he affirmed with a smile that chilled me.
“You mean to leave the portrait as it is then?” I persisted.