“Is it a railway strike you’re afraid of?” demanded Dr. Veiga cruelly.

And Eve replied with sweetness: 

“I can’t leave London until my son Charlie comes back from Glasgow, and he’s written me to say he’ll be here next week.”

A first-rate example, this, of her new secretiveness!  She had said absolutely nothing to Mr. Prohack about a letter from Charlie.

“When did you hear that?” Mr. Prohack might well have asked; but he was too loyal to her to betray her secretiveness by such a question.  He did not wish the Portuguese quack to know that he, the husband, was kept in the dark about anything whatever.  He had his ridiculous dignity, had Mr. Prohack, and all his motives were mixed motives.  Not a perfectly pure motive in the whole of his volitional existence!

However, Sissie put the question in her young blundering way.  “Oh, mother dear!  You never told us!”

“I received the letter the day before yesterday,” Eve continued gravely.  “And Charlie is certainly not coming home to find me away.”

For two entire days she had had the important letter and had concealed it.  Mr. Prohack was disturbed.

“Very well,” Dr. Veiga concurred.  “It doesn’t really matter whether you go to Frinton now or next month, or even next year but one.  You’re a powerful woman and you’ll last a long time yet, especially if you don’t worry.  I won’t call for about a week, and if you’d like to consult another doctor, do.”  He smiled on her in an avuncular manner, and rose.

Whereupon Mr. Prohack also jumped up.

“I’m not worrying,” she protested, with a sweet, pathetic answering smile.  “Yes, I am.  Yes, I am.  I’m worrying because I know I’m worrying my poor husband.”  She went quickly to her poor husband and kissed him lavishly.  Eve was an artist in kissing, and never a greater artist than at that moment.  And now Mr. Prohack, though still to the physical eye a single individual, became two Mr. Prohacks.  There was the Mr. Prohack who strongly deprecated this departure from the emotional reserve which is one of the leading and sublimest characteristics of the British governing-class.  And there was the Mr. Prohack, all nerves and heart and humanity, who profoundly enjoyed the demonstration of a woman’s affection, disordered and against the rules though the demonstration might be.  The first Mr. Prohack blushed and hated himself for blushing.  The second was quite simply enraptured and didn’t care who knew it.

“Dr. Veiga,” Eve appealed, clinging to Mr. Prohack’s coat.  “It is my husband who needs looking after.  He is not making any progress, and it is my fault.  And let me tell you that you’ve been neglecting him for me.”

She was a dramatic figure of altruism, of the everlasting sacrificial feminine.  She was quite possibly absurd, but beyond doubt she was magnificent.  Mr. Prohack felt ashamed of himself, and the more ashamed because he considered that he was in quite tolerable health.