“You always did talk wot,” remarked Carminow placidly.  “You’re weally not a bit changed, Killigrew, in spite of Paris.  By the way, I suppose you heard about Polkinghorne?”

“Yes, from Old Tring.  I went to St. Renny a little while ago.”

“Ah! then you heard about Hilaria?  I thought from Ruan’s mention of her you had neither of you heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Why,” said Carminow in rather a shocked voice, “about her illness.”

“No!...” exclaimed Ishmael and Killigrew in a breath; and Killigrew went on:  “What illness?  I can’t imagine the Hilaria we used to know ill.”

“She’s not the Hilaria we used to know, I’m afraid.  You would hardly recognize her.  She’s got a disease—­you wouldn’t know it if I were to tell you its name—­that is one of the most obscure known to science, if you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it.  Yes, she’s hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria.”  A certain impersonal note as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the genuine feeling in Carminow’s voice.

“But it’s impossible!” cried Ishmael, profoundly shocked, not so much at any personal feeling for Hilaria, as an instinctive protest that such things could be.  “Hilaria—­why she was never still, and the things she did—­why, you remember her walks and her fencing and everything—­”

“Old Dr. Harvey at St. Renny puts it down very largely to those excessive walks she used to take,” said Carminow.

Ishmael said nothing; he was struck by a greater horror that it should have been those walks, which had so seemed to set Hilaria apart from her sex, on which he had so often accompanied her, of which even now he could recall the delight though he had not thought of them since....  Carminow went on: 

“But of course I don’t agree with him; he only says that because he always disapproved of the way poor old Eliot brought her up.  Personally I think it was a very healthy way, and I believe it will be for the good of the race when women are made to exercise more.  But Hilaria had the seeds of this sclerosis in her then, and nothing can stop it; over-exertion may have made it worse, as it does any illness, but it couldn’t have caused it.  It’s being mercifully rapid, that’s one comfort.”

“It’s ghastly,” said Killigrew in a low voice.  “Where is she, Carminow?  Have you seen her?”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I go when I can.  I think it gives her pleasure to see anyone from the old days.  She’s in a home for such things in London.  Her father lodges round the corner to be near her.  It’s awful to see him.  You know how he was about her....  She would be brought back from France when they found out how bad it was.  D’you remember how her eyes used to give out sometimes when she was reading to us?  That was all part of the same thing, always in her, beginning to come out.”

A little silence.  Both Ishmael and Killigrew were wondering if they ought to go and see her or not, both fighting a repulsion of which Killigrew’s was more purely aesthetic and Ishmael’s rather a passionate wish to keep thought of such a thing away from life....