And this woman?

He looked up at last.  He thought with a thrill that was not of pity, of a bird hit in full flight and mortally hurt, panting out its life in the heather, its gay plumage limp and dishevelled.  The jewels and outrageous dress had become a jest that had turned against her.  A shadow of the empty, good-humoured smile still lingered on a painted mouth palsied with fear.  She was swaying slightly, rhythmically, backwards and forwards, and rubbing the palms of her hands on the carved arms of her chair, and he could hear her breath, short and broken like the shallow breathing of a sick animal.  And yet he became aware that she was thinking—­thinking very rapidly—­calling up unexpected reserves.

“Trois—­mois—­trois mois.  Well, but I don’t feel so ill—­I don’t feel ill at all—­per’aps for a leetle month—­just a leetle month.”

He had no clue to her thought.  She looked about her rather vaguely as though everything had suddenly become unreal.  There were tears on her cheeks, but they were the tears of her recent laughter.  She rubbed them off on the back of her hand with the unconscious gesture of a street child.

“I suffer much?”

“I’m afraid so.  Though, of course, anyone who attends on you will do his best.”

“Death so ugly—­so sad.”

“Not always,” he said.

It was true.  She had been a beast of prey all her life.  Now it was her turn to be overtaken and torn down.  Only sentimentalists like Francey Wilmot could see in her a cause for pity or regret.

They sat opposite each other through a long silence.  He gave her time.  He showed her consideration.  He thought of the pale-blue chauffeur waiting in the biting cold of a winter’s afternoon.  Well, he would be alive after she had become a loathsome fragment of corruption.  He was revenged—­they were all revenged on her now.

She fumbled with her gold and jewelled bag.

“What do I owe, Monsieur le docteur?”

“Three guineas.”

She put the money on the table.

“That is ver’ little for so much.  I think—­when I can’t go on any more—­I come to your ’ospital.  You take me in, hein?  I ’ave a fancy.”

He made an unwilling movement.  It revolted him—­this obtuseness that would not see that he hated her.

“I can’t prevent your coming if you want to.  You would be more in your element in your own home.  Even in their private rooms they don’t allow the kind of things you’re accustomed to.  There are regulations.  Your friends won’t like them.”

She looked up at him with a startled intentness.

“Mes pauvres amis—­I ’ave so many.  They won’t understand.  They say:  ‘That’s one of Gyp’s leetle jokes.’  They won’t believe it—­they won’t dare.”

She gave him her hand, and he touched it perfunctorily.

“It’s as you like, of course.  You have only to let me know.”