With his dimmed eyes he looked at the reflection of the sunlight upon her.
"Some one is going to be born, and some one is going to die," he said.
The other woman started, while the man's companion cried in a low tone, bending over him quickly.
"Oh, Philip, don't say that."
He seemed indifferent to the effect he had produced, as though her protest had not been sincere, or else were in vain.
Perhaps, after all, he was not an old man. His hair seemed to me scarcely to have begun to turn grey. But he was in the grip of a mysterious illness, which he did not bear well. He was in a constant state of irritation. He had not long to live. That was apparent from unmistakable signs—the look of pity in the woman's eyes mingled with discreetly veiled alarm, and an oppressive atmosphere of mourning.
. . . . .
With a physical effort he began to speak so as to break the silence. As he was sitting between me and the open window, some of the things he said were lost in the air.
He spoke of his travels, and, I think, also of his marriage, but I did not hear well.
He became animated, and his voice rose painfully. He quivered. A restrained passion enlivened his gestures and glances and warmed his language. You could tell that he must have been an active brilliant man before his illness.