“To get up in the middle of the night with the window wide open, to walk about the room in your nightgown!”
“I should not have done so, you know, if you had passed me the things when I asked you for them.”
“You don’t want a nurse at all,” she repeated.
“Yes, I do. What I don’t want is a gaoler.”
I was on the sofa when Dr. Kennedy called, the papers on the table beside me. He asked eagerly what I thought of them:
“I see you have got at them. Are you disappointed, exhilarated? Are they illuminative? Tell me about them; I want so much to hear.”
He had forgotten to ask how I was.
“I will tell you about them presently. I haven’t read them all. Up to now they are certainly disappointing, if not dull! They are business letters, to begin with. But it is obvious she is trying to get up something like a flirtation with him.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! I have watched Ella, my sister Mrs. Lovegrove, for years. She is past mistress of the art of flirtation. Sentiment and the appeal of her femininity, a note of unhappiness and the suggestion the man’s friendship may assuage it....”