ANABEL. No. My chest. Pneumonia--oh, a complication. OLIVER. How sickening! Who looked after you? Is it better? ANABEL. Yes, it's a great deal better. OLIVER. But, Anabel--we must fix a meeting. I say, wait just a moment. Could I call on your people? Go into town with me one day. I don't know whether Gerald intends to see you--whether he intends to ask you to Lilley Close. GERALD. Oh, it's all right. ANABEL. He's no need. I'm fixed up there already. GERALD. What do you mean? ANABEL. I am at Lilley Close every day--or most days--to work with your sister Winifred in the studio. GERALD. What?--why, how's that? ANABEL. Your father asked me. My father was already giving her some lessons. GERALD. And you're at our house every day? ANABEL. Most days. GERALD. Well, I'm--well, I'll be--you managed it very sharp, didn't you? I've only been away a fort-night. ANABEL. Your father asked me--he offered me twelve pounds a month--I wanted to do something. GERALD. Oh yes, but you didn't hire yourself out at Lilley Close as a sort of upper servant just for twelve pounds a month. ANABEL. You're wrong--you're wrong. I'm not a sort of upper servant at all--not at all. GERALD. Oh, yes, you are, if you're paid twelve pounds a month--three pounds a week. That's about what father's sick-nurse gets, I believe. You don't do it for twelve pounds a month. You can make twelve pounds in a day, if you like to work at your little models: I know you can sell your statuette things as soon as you make them. ANABEL. But I CAN'T make them. I CAN'T make them. I've lost the spirit--the--_joi de vivre_--I don't know what, since I've been ill. I tell you I've GOT to earn something. GERALD. Nevertheless, you won't make me believe, Anabel, that you've come and buried yourself in the provinces--SUCH provinces--just to earn father's three pounds a week. Why don't you admit it, that you came back to try and take up the old threads. OLIVER. Why not, Gerald? Don't you think we ought to take up the old threads? GERALD. I don't think we ought to be left without choice. I don't think Anabel ought to come back and thrust herself on me--for that's what it amounts to, after all--when one remembers what's gone before. ANABEL. I DON'T thrust myself on you at all. I know I'm a fool, a fool, to come back. But I wanted to. I wanted to see you again. Now I know I've presumed. I've made myself CHEAP to you. I wanted to--I wanted to. And now I've done it, I won't come to Lilley Close again, nor anywhere where you are. Tell your father I have gone to France again--it will be true.