Mrs Lorton said with distinct tartness,
condemning privately his arrogance, and noticing the boots with a
strange feeling of sudden and unutterable despair.

"It is all so much worse for a woman," she added vaguely, with some idea
of out-doing him, such as she had felt once or twice at dinner parties,
when her epigrams had been smarter than his.

"The strong possess a greater capacity for suffering than the weak,"
Burnham retorted. "Medical science tells us that--"

"Please spare me the revelations of the dissecting-room," she cried
bitterly; "I am in no condition to bear them."

She glanced at him with pathetic eyes, and added, "I ought to have gone
to Margate."

"I ought to have gone there too," he said.

"Really, you make the conversation sound like one of Maeterlinck's
plays," she rejoined. "Do be more original."

The reproach cut him to the heart. He never knew why, but he felt so
much injured that he with great difficulty restrained his tears.

"Women can be very brutal," he said moodily, biting his lips, and
wondering how many authors it was necessary to read in order never to be
at a disadvantage with a clever woman.

Mrs Lorton was conscious that she had hurt him, and instead of being her
nice, natural self and glorying in the fact, she experienced a sense of
profound pity that gave her quite a tightened feeling about the left
side. However, she only said, "Men can be very selfish"--a generality
that many people consider as convincing as a bomb--and got up to go.

"I am staying at the St Mildred's," she remarked. "It is the dull
season, so I am the only person there at present."

"I beg your pardon," Burnham said, also getting upon his feet, "I am
there too. My number is 12 and I have a private sitting-room. I do not
feel up to the coffee-room yet."

Mrs Lorton turned as pale as ashes with vexation. She had no private
sitting-room, and had ordered dinner in the coffee-room for that very
evening.

She felt herself at a disadvantage as they walked in a gloomy silence
towards the beach.

III

Three days had passed away, and Jack Burnham had found that he was, in
his own phrase, "up to the coffee-room" after all. In consequence, Mrs
Lorton and he dined there every evening at separate tables. A sense of
rivalry--and there is no rivalry more keen than that between contesting
invalids--prevented both of them from eating as much as they would have
liked. When the widow refused a course, Burnham sh