AT SEA VIEW, SUNDERING ON SEA
"I suppose I must tell you sooner or later. I've had to see a doctor."
"Without consulting me!"
"I thought if it turned out to be fancy I needn't bother you."
"But how did you find a doctor?"
"There's a fellow at the corner. Oh! it’s no good making a long story of it. I have cancer. . . . Nothing will do but an operation." Self-pity wrung him. He controlled a violent desire to cry. "I am too ill to eat. I ought to be lying down."
She flopped back in her chair and stared at him as one stares at some hideous monstrosity. "Oh!" she said. "To have cancer now! In these lodgings!"
"I can't help it," he said in accents that were almost a whine. "I didn't choose the time."
"Cancer!" she cried reproachfully. "The horror of it!"
He looked at her for a moment with hate in his heart. He saw under her knitted brows dark and hostile eyes that had once sparkled with affection, he saw a loose mouth with downturned corners that had been proud and pretty, and this mask of dislike was projecting forward upon a neck he had used to call her head-stalk, so like had it seemed to the stem of some pretty flower. She had had lovely shoulders and an impudent humour; and now the skin upon her neck and shoulders had a little loosened, and she was no longer impudent but harsh. Her brows were moist with heat, and her hair more than usually astray. But these things did not increase, they mitigated his antagonism. They did not repel him as
27
