'
'What queer feeling?'
'I told you about it, and you were very sympathetic the other night,
before dinner. A kind of emptiness in the feet, and a hollowness in the
head, the feeling almost, but not quite, of faintness.'
'It's nearly two o'clock. Perhaps you're hungry,' said Madame Frabelle.
Bruce thought this was not fair, putting all the hunger on to him, as if
she had never felt anything so prosaic. Madame Frabelle always behaved
as if she were superior to the weaknesses of hunger or sleep, and denied
ever suffering from either.
'It may be. I had no breakfast,' said Bruce untruthfully, as though it
were necessary to apologise for requiring food to sustain life.
'Nor did I,' said Madame Frabelle hastily.
'Well, don't you feel that you would like a little lunch?'
'Oh no--oh dear, no. Still, I dare say some food would do you good, Mr
Ottley--keep you up. I'll come and watch you.'
'But you must have something too.'
'Must I? Oh, very well, just to keep you company.'
They got out very briskly, and, leaving their battered-looking coffin
(called ironically the _Belle of the River_), they walked with quick
steps to the nearest hotel.
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