Mrs. Neville Williams, with a swift movement, extinguished the lamp, and pulling up the window-blinds allowed the daylight to flood the room. Then she called the artist to her side.
“Now,” she exclaimed, turning her face towards him, “look at me!”
He looked, then gave an exclamation of horror. Could it be possible that this was the handsome and brilliant woman of yesternight? Her cheeks were haggard and drawn, the cheek-bones protruding with undue prominence; her eyes were sunken, her complexion yellow. Already the hand of death seemed to have set its seal upon her face. Yet only last night she had appeared before him, magnificent and splendid. What had happened in one short night to change her thus?
He turned aside, not knowing what to say. She sank on to a chair with a mirthless laugh.
“A clever woman, am I not?” she said, with feigned cheerfulness. “Clever to the last. You saw me last night, so you know how I looked. I shall look just as well when I am dressed for dinner this evening; I have a treasure of a maid, thank heaven. Any other woman afflicted with my disease would allow herself to be treated as an invalid, would eschew society, and go to bed. I have more pluck than that. And yet before the year is out, I shall probably be dead. A truly cheerful prospect, is it not?”
Herbert felt himself grow cold. That she spoke the truth now, he could not doubt; but it was positively gruesome to hear her talk like that.
“How long have you been so ill?” he asked, in a subdued voice. “Is there no cure?”
“None,” she answered resignedly. “It is over two years since I first contracted the complaint; but since last month I have rapidly grown worse. My husband’s consulting physician, Sir Dighton Forbes, has made me consent to undergo an operation on the 1st of December, although I do not at all like the idea of being butchered to satisfy the doctors.”
“Perhaps it may cure you,” suggested Karne, optimistically. “You must not lose hope.”
But Mrs. Neville Williams shook her head; she was convinced that she was doomed.