He lifted his eyebrows with a negligent, indifferent
expression.
'No--nothing new,' he replied, as if the question were quite casual,
trivial. 'He says the pulse is very weak indeed, very intermittent--but
that doesn't necessarily mean much, you know.'
He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and unfolded, with a
stricken look that roused him.
'No,' she murmured at length. 'I don't understand anything about these
things.'
'Just as well not,' he said. 'I say, won't you have a cigarette?--do!'
He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. Then he stood before
her on the hearth again.
'No,' he said, 'we've never had much illness in the house, either--not
till father.' He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her,
with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he
continued: 'It's something you don't reckon with, you know, till it is
there. And then you realise that it was there all the time--it was
always there--you understand what I mean?--the possibility of this
incurable illness, this slow death.
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