XXXV
"My dear," remarked the vicar, far more gravely than he was accustomed to remark upon things in this curious, interesting, troublesome, but not grave world, "you are killing yourself."
Delia lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and swung herself on to the library table.
"Nothing of the sort," she replied brusquely. "Merely a little run down by an unvaried diet of quarrelling, press campaigns, acrimonious public meetings and stale fish. I don't know whether the indigestion has been due to the debates or the fish. I suspect the former. Most of my co-habitants at Morrison House seem to survive the fish with imperturbable appetites. My dearest Father, do not at your eleventh hour begin to play the heavy parent with me. Always hitherto I've admired your dignified self-restraint about my eccentricities a good deal more than I have considered it advisable to state—and now—well, really, just because I happen to have had two or three bilious attacks!"
The vicar removed his glasses slowly, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at his daughter. "It seems to me a little uncharacteristic of you, my dear, who have always been almost arrogantly neglectful of your bodily needs, to throw up your work in the middle of what I take to be a monumental campaign of militant good intentions, and to come down for a fortnight into the country because you have had three bilious attacks."
Delia removed her cigarette from her smiling lips and blew out a squadron of smoke rings that floated in beautiful order along the firelit air.
"Oh, well," she said, swinging her legs. They were painfully thin legs, thought the vicar, judging from what he could see of them. Owing to his daughter's attitude he could see a considerable extent. "I suppose that I might as well tell you—I've not been particularly well for some time. I don't know what it is. I suppose that I have been overdoing things a little."
"Sixteen hours a day?" queried the vicar mildly. "Meetings in Hyde Park, heart-to-heart talks with bishops, members of parliament, and prostitutes—really quite alarming articles in the Press, my dear, and all this office work. Your Twentieth Century Reform League sounds so terribly—strenuous."
"The twentieth century is strenuous. To tell the truth, there are so many men and women doing nothing with their leisure that those who have any sort of responsibility towards society are nearly bound to overwork. However, Dr. Boden——"
"You went to a doctor then?"