“Rather nice here,” he said. “Can I have a wash?”
“Jack, show your father the lavatory.”
“The bathroom, please.”
The son crossed from the window, glanced at his father’s smiling face, and led the way.
Mrs. Raider, thin, pale, dark, spoke first. “Poor Philip!”
“Oh, Mother! It’s impossible to pity father; it always was. Except for his moustache being gone, I don’t see much change anyway. It’s you I pity. He simply can’t stay here. Why, everybody thinks you’re a widow.”
“People generally know more than they seem to, Beryl.”
“Nobody’s ever given us a hint. Why couldn’t he have consulted us?”
“We must think of him.”
“He didn’t think of us when he did that horrible thing. And it was so gratuitous, unless——! Mother, sometimes I’ve thought he had to do it; that he was her—her lover as well as her doctor!”