Breton went over to the sofa and the two men shook hands.
"How do you do?" Roddy said, smiling. "My word, the feller does look ill!" was Roddy's thought. He did not know what type of man he had expected to see, but it was not, most certainly, this nervous rather pathetic figure with the pointed beard, the white cheeks, the blue eyes, the armless sleeve, that uncertain movement that invited your consideration and seemed to say, "I've had a bad time—not altogether my fault. I'm trying now to do my best. Do help me."
"Just the sort of feller women would be sorry for," Roddy thought. But he was rather happily conscious that, although he was lying there helpless on his back, he was on the whole in better trim than his visitor.
Breton, before he sat down, turning to Roddy, said, "I was very nearly wiring to you my excuses, Sir Roderick. I've been most awfully unwell lately and all that thunder yesterday laid me up. I got sunstroke once in Africa and I've always had to be careful since."
"Jolly good of you to come," said Roddy. "Sorry it was such short notice. But I can never tell, you know, quite how I'll be from day to day."
Breton sat down and the two men looked at one another. To Breton, whose imagination led him to live in an alternation of consternation and anticipation, the whole affair was utterly bewildering. He had reached his rooms, on the night before, soaked to the skin, and had found Roddy's note waiting for him. It had seemed to him then as though it were, in all probability, some trick of the devil's, but he had of course accepted it as he accepted all challenges.
He had supposed that he would be confronted by a raging, tempestuous husband. He would welcome anything that would bring him again into contact with Rachel and he always enjoyed a scene. But he had never, for an instant, imagined that Rachel would be present. The sight of her took all calmer deliberation away from him because he wished so eagerly to speak to her and to hear her voice.
They were sitting with the table between them and they were both of them conscious first of Roddy, lying so still and watching them from his sofa, and then of the last time that they had met and of that last kiss they had taken. But Rachel, with strange relief and also with yet stranger disappointment, was realizing that Breton's presence gave her no spark, no tiniest flame of passion. She was sorry for him, she wished most urgently that no harm should come to him, she would, here at this moment, protect him with her life, with her honour, with anything that he might demand of her, but her emotion, every vital burning part of it, was given to her retention of Roddy.
She might have felt anger because she had, as it were, been entrapped, she might have felt terror of the possible results to herself ... she felt nothing except that she must not lose Roddy.
"I know now," she said, perhaps to herself, "I know at last what it is that I have wanted. And, knowing this, if, just grasping it, I should lose it!"