“What d’you say to light baths? _Heh_? What d’you say to zymotic massage? _Heh_?” whilst his friend had looked at Dudley with a helpless gaze, dropping down once or twice to feel Leicester’s pulse, and once to press his eyeball. But he did not utter a word, and to Grimshaw, too, the spectacle of these two men standing over the third--Sir William well back on his heels, his friend slouched forward--had given him a sudden feeling of revulsion. They appeared like vultures. He understood now that Pauline, too, had had the same feeling. “No, they don’t seem much good,” he said. She uttered, with a sudden fierceness, the words: “Then it’s up to you to do what’s to be done.” Robert Grimshaw recoiled a minute step. “Oh, I don’t mean,” she said, “because it’s your fault, but simply--I can’t think any more. It’s too lonely, yet I can’t talk about it. I can’t.” Mr. Held, his mouth wide open with agony, glided out of the room, squeezing his ascetic hands together. “But ...” Robert Grimshaw said. “Oh, I know,” she answered. “I _did_ talk to you about it. But it does not somehow seem to be right any more. Don’t you understand? Not only because it isn’t delicate or it doesn’t seem the right thing to talk about one’s relations with one’s husband, but simply ... I can’t. I can keep things going; I can run the house and keep it all dark.... But is he going to get well, or isn’t he? We know nothing. And I can’t face the question alone. I can _do_ things. It drives me mad to have to think about them. And I’ve no one to talk to, not a relation, not a soul in the world.” “You aren’t angry with me?” Grimshaw asked. “Angry!” she answered, with almost a touch of contempt in her voice. “Good heavens! I’d dust your shoes for all you’ve done for us, and for all you’re doing. But you’ve got to do more. You’ve got to do much more. And you have to do it alone.” “But ...” Robert Grimshaw said. Pauline remained silent. She began again to chafe Dudley Leicester’s hands between her little palms. Suddenly she looked hard at Grimshaw. “Don’t you understand?” she said. “I do, if you don’t, see where we’re coming to.” His face expressed a forced want of comprehension, as if he were afraid. She looked remorselessly into his eyes. “It’s no use hiding our heads in the sand,” she said, and then she added in cold and precise words: “You’re love with me and I’m in love with you. We’re drifting, drifting. But I’m not the woman to drift. I mean to do what’s right, and I mean to make you. There’s no more to be said.” Robert Grimshaw walked to the farthest end of the tall room. He remained for a long time with his face to the corner. He attempted no denial. He could not deny, and once again he seemed older. His voice was even a little husky when, looking at her feet, he said: “I can’t think what’s to be done,” and, in a very low voice, he added, “unless ...” She looked at him with her lips parted, and he uttered the one word: “Katya!” Her hand went up over her heart.