He put his top-hat on the table, and stood the flowers in it as though it were a vase.
“But your poor hat!”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“They are such sappy things. I must thank you for all the flowers. They helped me to get well.”
He removed the daffodils, and wandered round the room till he found an empty pot that agreed to rid him of them.
“Don’t you bother—don’t you get up! I’ll settle them all right.”
He came back to the fire, rubbing his hands and smiling. The smile died a sudden death when he dared to take his first good look at Eve, and with it much of his self-consciousness seemed to vanish. He sat down rather abruptly, staring.
“I say, you have had a bad time!”
“I’m afraid I have.”
She looked thin, and ill, and shadowy, and plain, and her eyes were the eyes of one who was worried. A tremulous something about her mouth, the droop of her neck, the light on her hair, stirred in John Parfit an inarticulate compassion. The man in him was challenged, appealed to, touched.