Janet. (Examining his features.) But surely you’re not feeling very well?

Carve.  I’m not.  Perhaps it’s these sleepless nights I’ve had.

Janet.  You’re shivering.

Carve.  I was wearing my dressing-gown.  I nearly always do when I’m alone.  Do you think you’d mind if I put it on again.

Janet.  Do you mean to say you took it off because of me? (Seizing dressing-gown firmly.) Mr. Shawn, will you oblige me by getting-into this at once? (She helps him on with dressing-gown.) What a beauty!

Carve.  Yes.  Cousin Cyrus thought so too.  He didn’t want me to bring it away.  Still, I beat him on that point. (Janet arranges the collar.) Do you know, you do me good.

Janet.  I should think so.  I suppose when gentlemen live alone they’re pretty nearly always unwell, as it were.  If it isn’t a cold, it’s stomach, I expect.  And truly, I’m not surprised, the way they go on!  Now, will you sit down in that chair and keep your legs covered—­August or no August!  If you ask me, it’s influenza you’re sickening for.  (Sound of distant orchestral.) Music?

Carve. (Nodding and sitting down in easy chair.) Well, and what’s the news from outside?  I haven’t stirred since yesterday noon.

Janet.  Seems to me there’s no news except your Mr. Carve’s death.

Carve.  Really!  Is it so much talked about as all that?

Janet.  It’s on all the posters—­very big.  All along Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square and the Strand the newspaper boys, and the newspaper old men too, are wearing it like aprons, as it were.  I read the Telegraph myself.  There was nearly a page of it in the Telegraph.

Carve. (Staggered.) Nearly a page of it in the Telegraph!

Janet.  Yes, besides a leading article.  Haven’t you——­

Carve.  I never read obituaries of artists in the papers.

Janet.  Neither do I. But I should have thought you would.

Carve.  Well, they make me angry.  Obituaries of archbishops aren’t so bad.  Newspapers seem to understand archbishops.  But when they begin about artists—­you cannot imagine the astounding nonsense they talk.

Janet. (Protesting against his heat.) Now!  You’re still all on wires. 
Why should that make you angry?

Carve.  What did the Telegraph say?  Did you look at it?

Janet.  Oh yes.  It appears Mr. Carve was a very eccentric
person—­avoiding society and so on.

Carve. (Resentful.) Eccentric!  There you are!  He wasn’t eccentric in the least.  The only society he avoided was the society of gaping fools.

Janet.  Well, I’m just telling you what it said.  Then, let me see—­what else did it say?  Oh!  It said the sole question was whether Mr. Carve was the greatest painter since Velasquez—­is that how you pronounce it?—­or whether he was the greatest painter that ever lived.