Rachel coloured. "I hope——"
"Oh yes, you do, and that's exactly why I wanted to see you."
She turned then and, very carefully, very slowly, her eyes searched Rachel's face.
"I let him marry you, you know. I thought it would be good for you. If I'd guessed the effect that you'd have had upon him I'd have prevented it."
Rachel's anger was rising.
"What effect?"
"He's begun to worry about other people—a fatal thing with a man like Roddy who was meant to do things, not think about them. But, anyway, that's all too late now.... Waste of time discussing it.... What I wanted you for is this——"
Her eyes left Rachel's face and returned to the window.
"You're the one person now that influences him and you will always be so. I can see ahead well enough. Poor Roddy ... and he might have been a fine man. All the same, I admire him for it; there are things about you I could have liked if I'd wanted to find them, but we've been fighting from the beginning until now—when it's the end ..." She caught her breath, stayed for an instant struggling for words, then went on:
"We can call a truce now. We don't like one another, but just at the moment you're moved a little because I'm feeble and shall be dead in a fortnight. That disturbs you.... It needn't. Some months ago a moment did come when I realized that I should die soon. I hated it—I fought and struggled with all my might ... but now that it has come it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I regret nothing. I've had my time. I hate the new generation, the manly woman and the soft man with all this sentimental nonsense about caring for other people. Think of yourself, fight for yourself, keep up your pride—that's the only way the world's ever been run. You're a sentimentalist and you're making one of Roddy.... Nonsense it all is.... But all this isn't what I really wanted to say." She turned back and her eyes, as again they held Rachel, were softer.