“And, Iris, if you don’t have it cut soon it will be as long as a woman’s hair.”
“As for me,” she whispered, “all this effort wasted ... no playmate, no nothing. Masters warned me, too.... Dead as dead, the poor darling was....” Slowly, slowly, tears were crawling down the tiny grey cheeks. Hastily I wiped them away, hearing a step outside. “Nothing, nothing ...” she kept on whispering with closed eyes, and I barely had time to whisk away a tear from her eyelash as the door opened.
“Well?” that man muttered. “Killed her yet?”
“I think she’s asleep,” I whispered. “Ssh.”
“Stuff!” snapped Masters. “She’s been crying. Out you go.”
Suddenly Iris said in that enormous, preserved voice: “I have not been crying.”
Masters, whose great brown coat filled the whole side of the bed, so that I was nowhere, looked down at her like a worried bird....
“I’d like,” she pleaded, “to say good-bye ... to this gentleman, if you would kindly ... get out of the way for a minute....” And when I bent over the wasted hand, from which the emerald ring now hung like a hoop, she said: “Ah, that defiant courtesy! Thank you, my dear. And good-bye for ever as ever is, for I don’t suppose I shall ever come back to England again ... nevermore, nevermore. And,” she whispered, “I will keep my promise....”