Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.
"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from Captain Boyson that I heard——"
"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French—poor old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your—or his—or anybody's society."
He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished. His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.
He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to conduce to a woman's good looks.
At last he threw in a dry interrogation.
"Well?"
"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away, "to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy——"
"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want, or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I shall want—from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in your trying your hand at reforming me."
"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone. "I—I wanted to suggest something practical—some way by which you might—release yourself from me—and also recover your health."