He withdrew stealthily, regained his own room, and sat down in the armchair.
That passion of tears could flow from one source only. He knew Sibyl well enough to know that she had no tears, no strong emotion, for anything except that which affected her own personal happiness. Her slight nature could not reach to impersonal love, any more than it could reach to righteous anger. All this apparent failure of health and listlessness had a mental cause, as he had always feared, as he now knew for certain. She was unhappy.
'She has ceased to love me,' said Mr. Loftus to himself, 'and she is in despair. Doll loves her, and she has found it out. Those tears are for Doll.'
There was a long pause of thought.
He started at the remembrance that she was probably still lying on the floor in her thin night-gown.
He got up, and tapped distinctly at the door of her bedroom. At first there was no reply, but after the second time there was a slight hurried movement and a faint 'Come in.' He went in. She had crept back into bed, as he had hoped she would at the sound of his tap.
'May I have your salts?' he said, taking them from the dressing-table. 'I have waked with a headache.'
'Can I do anything for it?' she asked, but without moving, her miserable eyes following his thin, gaunt figure in its gray dressing-gown.
'Nothing, my dear, except forgive me for disturbing you.'
'I was not asleep,' said Sibyl, yielding to the impulse, irresistible to some women, to approach the subject which they are trying to conceal.