Borrodaile bent his head, and glanced past Vida to the abandoned minister.
'Console me by saying a slight weariness.'
'More like loathing.'
'Not of both your neighbours, I hope.'
He lost the low 'Of myself.' 'But there's one person,' she said, with something like enthusiasm—'one person that I respect and admire.'
'Oh!' He glanced about the board with an air of lazy interest. 'Which one?'
'I don't know her name. I mean the woman who dares to sit quite silent and eat her dinner without looking like a lost soul.'
'I've been saying you could do that.'
She shook her head. 'No, I've been engaged for the last hour in proving I haven't the courage. It's just come over me,' she said, her eyes in their turn making a tour of the table, and coming back to Borrodaile with the look of having caught up a bran-new topic on the way—'it's just come over me, what we're all doing.'
'Are we all doing the same thing?'