“You’d need to have been called in nearly five years ago,” Snow retorted, “and then you would have failed. I was on the case five years ago,” he added bitterly, “and I failed.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Foster remarked limply. Harley Street does not over-value or over-esteem lay practitioners.
CHAPTER LVI
They were alone in the garden at sunset.
They had been sitting here, on the broad garden bench, hand in hand, since tea, but saying little. King-lo had left her a few moments ago and had gathered the rose that she was wearing at her breast, where he had pinned it.
“The sweetpeas need thinning over there,” Lo said, pointing. Then he drew his hand across her face. “Ruby!” His eyes smiled into hers, and then, like a tired child, he laid his head on her shoulder.
And when she understood—it was some time—before her tears came—his wife bent and kissed him on the lips.
When the bell began to toll there was scarcely a window in the village at which a hand did not draw down a blind.