"Well, I've known Gardiner five and twenty years, and I'd never have called him unsteady. Hard as nails, more like."
"So he is that too."
"Now what on earth do you mean?"
"Well, of course he'd be hard so long as he hadn't anything to face he really minded, wouldn't he? And till this he didn't, did he? It's what you said yourself—he's always been lucky. But if you get him off his guard he's rather unusually sensitive. Look at the way he feels pain!"
"I never saw him feel pain. In my company he's always been brutally robust."
"Well, but can't you tell he would, by the set of his lips?"
"No," said Denis, "I can't. I've not your imagination."
To this Lettice made no reply, unless one might count the slight derisive lift of her chin. She never would take up the personal question. She would never, if she could help it, say: "I thought." She was sometimes driven to say, "I did," but even then she kept to the bald facts, uncolored by her personality. Denis, shifting in his chair to a more convenient angle, continued to regard her with attention, in which now mingled some amusement.
"Oh ah," he said, "you were there when he damaged his hand, weren't you? I'd forgotten. How long was it you stayed on at Rochehaut after I left?"
"About six weeks."