Roger: "Sibyl! Don't be so lugubrious...."
Sibyl: "Why? Do you suppose I don't pretty well know my own condition? I am dying slowly of cancer, what the doctors call 'un lent dépérissement.' I expect this is what Mother died of later in life. The doctors would be ready enough to operate again if there was any chance.... As it is, they know it is more merciful to let me linger out my few remaining weeks or months than submit me to the shock of an operation which might kill me at once. I may live to October, Dr. Périgord thinks. Or he puts it more pleasantly: 'Vers le mois d'Octobre nous saurons oui ou non, si la guérison de M'ame la Baronne s'effectuera. Les eaux de Villette opèrent parfois des miracles: espérons toujours.' ... And so on.... I don't suffer much pain—as yet. When it comes on they'll put me under morphia. I shall stay here till this political crisis is over or the fine weather begins to break. Then Clithy will motor me to Calais and from Dover to Engledene. Engledene will be the best place to die at. And, of course, remember, I want to be buried at Aldermaston, near Lucy—and near where you'll be laid some day—unless you marry again, which I should hardly think you'll do. I shall have a perfect right to occupy a small space in Aldermaston churchyard, because I'm a parishioner. I bought the farm that father so ridiculously mismanaged and that you made so prosperous. I've left it in my will to my brother Gerry, as some compensation for having taken no notice of him since I got married.... But, as I said before, what a scene! Not even your beloved Happy Valley could better those flowers in the urns and vases and borders and parterres—those scarlet geraniums, scarlet cannas, scarlet salvias, and scarlety-crimson Lobelia cardinalis. We grow them at Engledene, but they're nothing like these. And the heliotrope, and ageratum ... and those blue salvias and orange calceolarias. I know it's rather vulgar, but the whole effect is superbly staged; don't you think so?....
"And the women's dresses. Many of them, of course, are mannequins, just showing off for the Paris shops. And then to see pass by all the celebrated if over-rated people you've heard so much about, just as though they were well-made-up supers on the stage. And the music of those alternate orchestras... and such African sunlight ... and ... you next to me...."
Roger: "Look here, if you talk so much I shan't wonder you get weaker instead of stronger. Eat up your breakfast and drink your milk."
Sibyl: "I will. But I must talk to you. I shall soon be silenced for ever...."
Roger: "So shall I, when my time comes. So will every one. You don't give yourself a chance, talking in this morbid way. The doctors are often wrong. Remember the case of Lady Waterford?"
Sibyl: "Blanchie?"
Roger: "Yes.... A good soaking in Villette water may get rid of all your trouble and some day you may be weeping over me as I lie dying of Bright's disease."
Sibyl (not paying much attention): "Roger! Do you think there is going to be War?"
Roger: "Not this time. Look there! D'you see those gardes champêtres in that green uniform?"