One or two had laughed.
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.
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