"Poor little thing! Poor little thing! Poor little thing!" He found that he was repeating the words aloud. . . . The lid of the kettle suddenly lifted. He made the tea and carried it into the other room. It was dark now, with the fog and the early evening. He switched on the light and then as she turned, making a slight movement of protest with her hand, he switched it off again. She sat up a little, catching at the cup, and then began to drink it with eager, thirsty gulps.
"Ah, that's good!" he heard her murmur. "Good!" He gave her some more, then a third cup. With a little sigh she sank back satisfied. She lay then without speaking and he thought she was asleep. He drew a chair to the bedside and sat down there, leaning forward a little towards her. He could not see her now at all: the room was quite dark.
Suddenly she began to speak in a low, monotonous voice——
"I oughtn't to have come. . . . Do you know I nearly came once last year? I was awfully hard up and I got your address from the publishers. I didn't like to go to them again this time. It was just chance that you might still be here. I wouldn't have come to you at all if I hadn't been so hard up. . . ."
"Hush," he said, "you oughtn't to talk. Try and sleep."
She laughed. "You say that just as you used to. You aren't changed very much, fatter a bit. I'd have known you anywhere. I wouldn't have come if I'd known where Benois was. He's in London somewhere, but he's given me the slip. Not the first time either. . . . I'm not going to stay here, you know. You needn't be frightened."
The voice was changed terribly. He would have recognized it from the thin sharp note, almost of complaint, that was still in it, but it was thickened, coarsened, with a curious catch in it as though her breathing were difficult.
"Don't talk now. Rest!" he repeated.
"Yes, you're not changed a bit. Fatter of course. I've often wondered what you'd turned into. How you got on in the War. You know Jerry was killed—quite early, at the beginning. He was in the French Army. He treated me badly. But every one's treated me badly. All I wanted was to be happy. I didn't mean to do any one any harm. It's cruel the way I've been treated."
Her voice died off into a murmur. He caught only the words "Benois . . . Paris . . . Station."