Something was different here, something that frightened her. An ash-grey door instead of an iron gate.
She pushed it open and came into the last corridor of the Hotel Saint Pierre.
THE TOKEN
I
I have only known one absolutely adorable woman, and that was my brother’s wife, Cicely Dunbar.
Sisters-in-law do not, I think, invariably adore each other, and I am aware that my chief merit in Cicely’s eyes was that I am Donald’s sister; but for me there was no question of extraneous quality—it was all pure Cicely.
And how Donald— But then, like all the Dunbars, Donald suffers from being Scottish, so that, if he has a feeling, he makes it a point of honour to pretend he hasn’t it. I daresay he let himself go a bit during his courtship, when he was not, strictly speaking, himself; but after he had once married her I think he would have died rather than have told Cicely in so many words that he loved her. And Cicely wanted to be told. You say she ought to have known without telling? You don’t know Donald. You can’t conceive the perverse ingenuity he could put into hiding his affection. He has that peculiar temper—I think it’s Scottish—that delights in snubbing and faultfinding and defeating expectation. If he knows you want him to do a thing, that alone is reason enough with Donald for not doing it. And my sister, who was as transparent as white crystal, was never able to conceal a want. So that Donald could, as we said, “have” her at every turn.
And, then, I don’t think my brother really knew how ill she was. He didn’t want to know. Besides, he was so wrapt up in trying to finish his “Development of Social Economics” (which, by the way, he hasn’t finished yet) that he had no eyes to see what we all saw: that, the way her poor little heart was going, Cicely couldn’t have very long to live.
Of course he understood that this was why, in those last months, they had to have separate rooms. And this in the first year of their marriage when he was still violently in love with her.