"Ah, that's good!" he heard her murmur. "Good!" He gave her some more, then a third cup. With a little sigh she sank back satisfied. She lay then without speaking and he thought she was asleep. He drew a chair to the bedside and sat down there, leaning forward a little towards her. He could not see her now at all: the room was quite dark.
Suddenly she began to speak in a low, monotonous voice----
"I oughtn't to have come. . . . Do you know I nearly came once last year? I was awfully hard up and I got your address from the publishers. I didn't like to go to them again this time. It was just chance that you might still be here. I wouldn't have come to you at all if I hadn't been so hard up. . . ."
"Hush," he said, "you oughtn't to talk. Try and sleep."
She laughed. "You say that just as you used to. You aren't changed very much, fatter a bit. I'd have known you anywhere. I wouldn't have come if I'd known where Benois was. He's in London somewhere, but he's given me the slip. Not the first time either. . . . I'm not going to stay here, you know. You needn't be frightened."
The voice was changed terribly. He would have recognized it from the thin sharp note, almost of complaint, that was still in it, but it was thickened, coarsened, with a curious catch in it as though her breathing were difficult.
"Yes, you're not changed a bit. Fatter of course. I've often wondered what you'd turned into. How you got on in the War. You know Jerry was killed--quite early, at the beginning. He was in the French Army. He treated me badly. But every one's treated me badly. All I wanted was to be happy. I didn't mean to do any one any harm. It's cruel the way I've been treated."
Her voice died off into a murmur. He caught only the words "Benois . . . Paris . . . Station."
Soon he heard her breathing, soft with a little catch in it like a strangled sob. He sat on then, hearing nothing but that little catch. He did not think at all. He could see nothing. He was sightless in a blind world, coil after coil of grey vapour moving about him, enclosing him, releasing him, enclosing him again--"Poor little thing!" "Poor little thing!" "Poor little thing!"
He did not move as the evening passed into night.