He came in, white and blear-eyed.
“Whatever have you been doing all this time?” she began angrily.
“I've been chatting with the doctor.” He was pretending to read a newspaper: there was something funny about his voice.
“It's ripping. He says you'll soon be fit again, as long as you don't get colds, or that sort of thing. Yes, he says you'll soon be fit again”—a quick, crackling noise—he had gripped the newspaper in his fist.
She looked at him, surprised, in spite of herself. She would never have thought he'd have done it like that. He was a good sort, after all. But—she didn't know why—she broke out furiously:
“You infernal liar!—I know. I shall be done for by the end of February—ha! ha!”
Seizing a vase of flowers, she flung it into the grate. The crash and the shrivelling of the leaves in the flames brought her an instant's relief. Then she said quietly:
“There—I've made an idiot of myself; but” (weakly) “I didn't know—I didn't know—I thought it was different.”
He hesitated, embarrassed by his own emotion. Presently he went up to her and put his hands round her cheeks.