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She arrived at one in the morning. Mr. Thorpe by that time had taken three bedrooms, and a sitting-room.
‘I can’t pay,’ said the unhappy Jocelyn on seeing these arrangements.
‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
‘I don’t know why——’ began Jocelyn, shrinking under the accumulating weight of obligations.
‘But I do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, cutting him short.
Mrs. Luke never forgot that pink sitting-room at the Carlton, for it was there that Jocelyn, walking up and down it practically demented, cast himself adrift from her for ever. And yet what had she done but try to help him? What had she ever done all his life but love him, and try to help him?
‘There’s been too much of that—there’s been too much of that,’ Jocelyn raved, when she attempted, faintly, for she was exhausted, to defend herself.
She soon gave up. She soon said nothing more at all, but sat crying softly, the tears dropping unnoticed on her folded hands.
Before this, however, while the car was fetching her from South Winch, Mr. Thorpe, bracing himself to his plain and unshirkable duty, invited Jocelyn into the sitting-room he had engaged, and ordered whiskies and sodas. These he drank by himself, while Jocelyn, his head sunk on his chest, sat stretched full length in a low chair staring at nothing; and having drunk the whiskies, Mr. Thorpe felt able to perform his duty.