Upon one occasion Arithelli had complained that her mane of untended hair made her uncomfortably hot, and Michael brought out a pocket knife, clubbed it all together in his hand like a horse's tail, and obligingly offered to relieve her by cutting it off. Emile had arrived only just in time to prevent the holocaust, and the two men exchanged fiery words for the next ten minutes.
Another day, prompted by a desire to amuse her, Michael introduced into her room a fat mongrel puppy with disproportionate legs and an alarmed expression. His wish to provide her with what he was pleased to call a "divarsion" was, like many of his other good intentions, not entirely successful. He had deposited the excited animal on the bed, and in the course of its frantic gambols it overbalanced and fell sprawling to the floor on its back. The ancient canopied bed was high, and the puppy was frightened as well as hurt, and lifted up its voice in anguished yells. When Michael had rescued it, and put it outside the door and finished laughing, he came back to find Arithelli weeping helplessly with her face buried in the pillow. His alarmed suggestion that he should fetch Emile helped her to recover more quickly than any amount of sympathy could have done.
Sometimes there were other visitors. The grooms and strappers from the Hippodrome came often to enquire, and Estelle, forbidden by the Manager to come at all on account of infection, sat on the stairs and showered effusive speeches in a high-pitched voice through the open door.
Arithelli had sent no word of her illness to her parents in London. She knew their views on the subject of complaints. They would consider the whole thing due to imagination, there would be unpleasant letters, and it was perfectly certain that they would send no assistance in the shape of money. Emile had wished to write, but she had begged him not to do so, and for once he had yielded to what he called her "whims."
From the scraps of information she had received from time to time it appeared that the uncomfortable ménage of her kindred had become even more disorganised. Her father had turned for consolation to the whisky of his country, her mother spent whole days in bed reading, and weaving futile dreams of a recovered fortune, and Isobel and Valerie grew taller and hungrier, and fought and wrangled after the manner of Hooligans. Lazy and shiftless, they envied Arithelli the life she had chosen, but had neither the pluck nor the brains necessary to emulate her example.
Emile's manner had troubled her of late, for he had been strangely bad-tempered and variable in his moods. She had become more or less accustomed to his eccentricities of behaviour and speech, but this was something different, indefinable. One day he would be extraordinarily kind and considerate, the next almost brutal, either hardly speaking at all, or else finding fault with everything she said and did.
She often felt a presentiment that he had something important to tell her, but he would come and go without imparting any news, and, as always, she did not worry him with questions as many women would have done.
She wondered if he were feeling harassed over "les affaires politiques," or whether he was afraid that the Manager's small stock of patience would be exhausted before she was able to appear in the ring again, and that he would cancel her contract. If that happened she felt that the end of all things would have indeed arrived. She could not struggle against the Fates any longer, obviously she could not return home, and it was not fair that Emile should continue to keep her.
He came in one evening about eight o'clock to find her up for the first time since her illness, and sitting on the edge of the bed draped in the long blue cloak she used for covering her circus attire.
Her hair was parted over her ears, and divided into two long sleek braids drawn forward and falling over her shoulders, the ends resting on her lap.