--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."

"You are ver' kind."

He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the servant. From his
vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the
pale-blue limousine. A few loiterers gaped. By an ironical chance a
barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous,
familiar gallop. It sounded