"It would be a criminal choice, wouldn't it?" she said. "I haven't made
it out. And he, you know, still dreams only of Bengali souls for
redemption, never of me at all."
A servant of the house, with the air of a messenger, brought Alicia a
scrap of paper. She glanced at it, and then, with hands that trembled,
began folding it together.
"He has been allowed to get up and sit in a chair," she murmured, "and
he wants me to come and talk to him."
"Well," said Hilda, "come."
She put her arm about Alicia and drew her out of the room to the foot of
the stairs. They went in silence, saying nothing even when they parted,
and Alicia, of her own accord, began to ascend. Half way up she paused
and looked down. Hilda turned to meet her glance, and something of
primitive puissance passed, conscious, comprehended, between the eyes of
the two women.
CHAPTER XVI.
For three days there had certainly been, with the invalid, no sign of
anything but convalescence. An appetite to cry out upon, a chartered
tendency to take small liberties, to make small demands; such
indications offered themselves to the eye that looked for other
betrayals. There had been opportunities--even the day nurse had gone and
Lindsay came to tea in the drawing-room--but he seemed to prefer to talk
about the pattern in the carpet, or the corpulence of the khansamah, or
things in the newspapers.
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