Emmie waited for what seemed a long time. She was looking out of a window when the patient and a woman nurse entered the room.
“How do you do, Mrs. Dyke?” And they shook hands.
Immediately after this conventional greeting, Mrs. Dyke seated herself on one of the rep-covered sofas and laid upon her knees a largish Bible that she had been carrying under her arm. Emmie went and sat beside her on the sofa. She was a little middle-aged woman, dressed very neatly in a blue serge gown of no particular fashion; her hair, parted in the middle, was drawn to the back of the head and there rolled into a compact ball; her manner was precise and formal, and she spoke in measured tones, as if weighing her words and attaching importance, even finality, to some of them. It seemed to Emmie that only her eyes were insane. Their colour was brown, with little specks of amber, and they had the sort of shining intensity that is to be observed in the eyes of children during high fever. Then Emmie noticed that there was something strange about her hands. The left one, the one with the wedding ring, had marks of severe wounds on the knuckles, and it appeared to be stiffened. Emmie thought at once—with a queer feeling of already having heard of this—that it had been banged through a window pane during a fit of violence.
“Insufficient organisation and want of method is usually to blame,” Mrs. Dyke was saying, in her precise way. She had begun talking as soon as she sat down, as if resuming a conversation with Emmie that had just been interrupted. “Then praying time is naturally forgotten. Prayers get omitted at the appointed moment, and one rarely if ever squares the account and gets the tally right. But in this book,” and she softly patted the Bible, “all such things are noted. Did I say this book? Pardon me—in a very much larger book, kept by the recording angel, who neither sleeps nor accepts drugs to make him sleep.”
The nurse was standing at a little distance, smiling good-naturedly; and she now asked Emmie if she should remain or go outside the door.
Emmie said she would like to be left alone with Mrs. Dyke.
“All right,” said the nurse, and she nodded significantly. “I shall be just outside the door—and I’ll leave it ajar. Call, if you want me, Miss Verinder.”
“Nurse Gale,” said Mrs. Dyke, quietly but authoritatively, “keep an eye on the clock. Don’t let the proper moment slip by.”
“Oh, do drop your rubbish,” said the nurse, laughing good-humouredly, as she went out into the corridor.
Mrs. Dyke continued to speak of religious matters, until, in a pause, Emmie tried to change the subject.