There was a small room off the pantry where, in emergency, Hattie sometimes slept on a box-couch.
“You can lie down there for a while if you wish,” she said. She helped him get up; he stumbled toward the pantry, guided by her, to the couch in the little room beyond. Here he sank down and dropped his head between his hands. She had turned to leave but halted and looked back at him from the pantry doorway.
“I had better call a physician,” she said, frightened by his deathly colour.
He might have explained that his pasty skin was partly due to prison pallor, partly to drugs. Instead he asked for a little more whiskey.
“I don’t want a doctor,” he muttered; “I’ll be all right after a nap. This whiskey will pull me together.... You go to bed.”
After a while he looked up at her, rested so, his shadowy eyes fixed on her with a sort of stealthy intentness.
“You’d better sleep if you can,” she said. “I’ll have to wake you soon. It is growing very late.”
“Oh God!” he burst out suddenly, “what a wreck I’ve made of our lives!”
“Not of mine,” she retorted coolly; and turned to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean to get you in wrong.... I meant to go straight after we were married.... But they got me wrong, Eris, they got me wrong!... It was the very last job I ever meant to do.... I gave up the plates. That’s how they let me off with a light one.... I’m out over a month, now——”