Arithelli lay on the big bed under the faded canopy. She had wrapped herself in a thin blue peignoir, and her face was half hidden in tangled hair. The tumbled bed-clothes were pulled to one side and dragging on the dusty boards. She was quite unconscious of anyone's presence, and moaned softly in a strangled fashion.
The two men stood without speaking, and watched the writhing, restless figure. Vardri turned away first with a smothered exclamation. Would he always be obliged to see her tortured in some way or another? The Fates were sending him more than any man could bear to look upon.
"What are you going to do?" he said roughly in French, "I can't stand seeing this!"
Emile showed no signs of surprise at the other's manifest anxiety, possibly because his own was as deep, though his method of expressing it was different. He felt helpless, and, being a man, resented the feeling, so by consequence his always rugged manner became even more unpleasant than usual.
"Well," he rejoined, "what can you expect in this filthy place? This street isn't so bad, but of course she has so often been down in those slums in the Parelelo. The Calle de Pescadores alone is enough to give anyone a fever. I think Sobrenski has made a point of sending her down every poisonous street in the place. Ireland's a clean country, you see, compared with this, so she hasn't much chance, and as she starves herself half the time that won't make things any better."
"She must have some woman to look after her. I suppose the landlady here will be no good?"
"Not unless you pay her.—Who's going to do that?"
"There's Estelle."
"Estelle!" Emile exploded a fierce Russian oath. "Do you want more hysterics?" Vardri was tramping up and down the room with the noiseless agility of an animal, his fingers mechanically at work at a cigarette.
"She must have a doctor too. Isn't there an English doctor here?"