Her eyes were very wide and steady on him, as he stood above her; they were sentinels put there to delude mankind, while Virginia’s soul was somewhere else, in some funny, unknown place; dolorous eyes, it occurred to him. So steady and blue and deep.... And he felt himself sinking into those eyes, right into her, he felt things snapping in his head, and he felt that if he lost himself in those eyes now he would be drowned for ever, he would be lost—and she too! He hardened; he pretended to.
“Have you told Tarlyon about the divorce?”
Still they looked up into his face, those sentinels. And when at last she closed her eyes he suffered a queer feeling that a great chance had gone from him, a great chance full of light and blessedness. She pressed her head back against her pillow, in a very tired way, and her lips smiled a little. She shook her head very gently.
“But I will,” she whispered; and her lips smiled a little.
He prowled about the room for a long time.
2
They often played picquet: Virginia in bed, Ivor in a chair by the bed, and between them the back of a copy of Vogue, on which they played. Enormous sums of money were won and lost on that polished and uncertain surface. Sometimes Ivor would win as much as £5000 at a sitting, and the next day maybe he would lose all that and some besides. Slips of paper were exchanged and treasured.
“If,” Virginia said, “you were to look at that slip of paper every morning and say to yourself it was worth £5000, it soon would be. It’s a matter of imagination....”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Ivor.
They were merry afternoons, those of her convalescence in August. Virginia had to stay in bed, very quietly, until her wounds were quite healed. She was allowed to lie on a sofa in the room for a very few minutes every day, and that’s all.