“I have the most sorrowful heart in the world,” she said. “He is dead!”
“Your husband?” he cried, shocked.
She bowed her head.
“Three months ago. But we will not speak of that, if you please. You will see now what a blessing it is for me that I can help you.”
As he grew stronger they talked more and more together—or, rather, she talked and he listened. It was a sort of monologue made up of her own vast experience. She had seen so much, traveled so much, suffered so much. She had seen plagues, famine, battles, she had lived in alien and hostile countries, she who lived so much through her friends had seen so many of them suffer; and now, past her youth, she found herself utterly alone, poor, friendless, thousands of miles from her home.
Hardy would sit propped up in a chaise longue near the window, and, while he smoked the five cigarettes he was permitted daily, he would listen to her charming voice, talking and talking. Sometimes he grew sleepy, but he concealed it.
There was one thing that puzzled him. She never sat with him in the evening.[Pg 21] After they had had dinner, which he now took in the dining room, he was always conducted back to his own room, and Anna would come in, with her sewing, to keep him company. This was not very entertaining, for she didn’t know a dozen words of English, and he didn’t like to read and entirely ignore her.
What on earth did Mme. Sensobiareff do with herself? He heard the doorbell ring, time after time, every evening, but he heard no sounds to indicate social activity, no voices, no moving about. Who came? He couldn’t ask Anna, and he didn’t care to ask her mistress; but he thought about it a great deal, and he didn’t like it.
The time came when he was declared well, and the doctor made his last visit.
“Now I’ll have to be thinking about going away,” he said.