Trix leant forward.
“Is the scheme really important?” she queried, her eyes on his face.
“I don’t know,” he replied, watching her. “But my amusement is.”
“Amusement,” said Trix slowly.
“Yes, my amusement,” he repeated mockingly. “I’ve had none for fifteen years. For fifteen years I have lived here like a log, alone, solitary. Now I’ve got a little amusement in pretending to be dead.”
Trix shook her head. It sounded quite mad. Then she remembered Doctor Hilary’s words to her when she had met him at the gates of Chorley Old Hall last August. He knew it was mad, but it was saving Nicholas from being atrophied, so he had said. To Trix’s mind at least a dozen more satisfactory ways might have been found to accomplish that end. But every man to his own taste. Also it was quite possible that a brain which had been atrophied, or practically atrophied for fifteen years, was not particularly capable of conceiving anything more enlivening.
“But you needn’t have been a log for fifteen years,” she said suddenly.
“Needn’t I?” he retorted. “Look at me.” He made a gesture towards his helpless legs.
“I wasn’t thinking of your body,” said Trix calmly. “I was thinking of your mind.”
Nicholas’s face hardened.