"I'm—here now," he said significantly.
"That means I'm to go up and find out if she wants to see you and if Lady Loring will let her?"
There was a sound of voices, as I knocked at the door—the nurse mildly begging her patient to go to sleep, Sonia resolutely and not too petulantly protesting that she had just finished. I delivered myself of my message, while she sat turning over a pile of manuscript and trying to read it and listen to me at the same time.
"Will you look at this?" she said at length.
She had written a condensed but pitiless version of the story which she had told me, starting with the day when she had chosen to believe that O'Rane was unfaithful to her and ending with the morning when she knew that she was going to bear Grayle a child.
"It's not very legible," she commented casually. "My writing's not up to much at the best of times, but when I'm in bed it's hopeless."
"I can read it," I said.
"I want you to read it to David," she went on in the same tone.
I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.
"Will you do that for me?" she asked.