It seemed to me that I must walk a long way to the bed near the window. It was a great four-poster bed, and it had a very tall head, of carved oak. There seemed to be but dark wood in that strange sickroom, and the perfume of wood. Beneath my careful feet was a narrow strip of drugget slanting from the door across to the bed, but on all sides of this strip the floor shone vast and brown in the dim light of a shaded lamp that stood on the heavy oak mantelpiece.
Never was one so little conscious of the odours of a sickroom, but, although I wouldn’t swear to it, there might have been the faint tang of furniture-polish, and maybe, as I stole nearby the great wide bed by the large window, that was the scent of Napier’s roses, which spread their heads from a carafe on a small table near the foot of the bed. Sitting against the carafe was a large white doll with her head asleep among Napier’s roses and a red silk handkerchief tied around her wrist. Ah, Mio Mi Marianne, unrepentant Magdalen, even the toys of your sisters heed your dominion! It was dark by the bed, for the light from the lamp did not reach nearly so far. The blind was not more than half-lowered down the large window, and across the courtyard I could just see the light within the lodge and, on the sill outside, the shape of a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.
The tall oak panel at the head cast a black shadow over the darkness of the bed, and at first I could no more than make out the shape of Iris’s head. I could hear the faint hush of her breathing. Boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny. But gone now the tawny pride of the tiger, gone the curls. Very tidily brushed her hair was, tidily swept back from the forehead, tidily lying on each cheek. It would be damp, I thought, to lie so flat. Her head lay like a dark flower on the pillow.
She was asleep, I thought, and I was going away, very well content to have heard the faint but regular hush of her breathing. She had fallen asleep, I thought, even as Sister Virginie had left her, and could there be better news than that she was asleep, breathing like a child? Then how frightened I was, just as I was about to steal away, to see her eyes wide open, staring up at me. Dark as her hair were her eyes, and almost as big as her head. I was in terror, real damp terror, lest she should be taking me for Napier. I did not know what to do, and her great dark eyes staring up at me. It would be like a stab from the mists about her to be thinking it was her lover who had come and to realise that it was me. Then I was happy to see that there was understanding in the dark, still eyes, she was not taking me for Napier, she was not dreaming. She was hurt, her eyes said. And, because I might not speak, I just touched her cheek with my hand, and the hair on her cheek was chill and damp. But her eyes seemed to wish to be saying something. She was hurt, her eyes said, but more than that I could not understand, and so I bent down nearer to her face. The skin was like thin grey paper over her shoulder-blades, her lips were chapped, and they drooped.
“Dying. …”
I shook my head sternly. Her lips were so dry and rough, and now I saw through a mist what I had not seen before, that her eyes were stricken with fear. That is what her eyes had wished me to understand, that now she was terrified of dying. That was what her dream had done, that was what last night’s piqûre du cœur had done. I turned to go away. But her eyes, dark and stricken, seemed to flutter, then they seemed to look at the roses on the small table. What is it, I thought, what is it she wants, and her eyes fluttering like that? Besides the white skirts of the doll whose head was asleep among Napier’s roses lay the great emerald and a small tortoiseshell comb. I thought of the tawny formal curls trembling like voiceless bells before the looking-glass in my flat above the mean lane, and when I took up the small comb there might have been a smile on the tiny grey face, like the shadow of a candle’s flicker. I passed the small comb through her hair, and it passed so easily through the straight damp hair, and then at last her eyes were closed and I went away as quickly as I could. Sister Virginie stood a little way up the passage, but for reasons of my own I did not wait for her to approach where I stood under the ailing yellow flame of the gas-jet, but went towards the darkness where she was.
“Were you good?” she asked me, and I think I said that I had tried to be good. “But, Sister Virginie, she is afraid! She is terrified!”
“Then she is being good, too,” the nun smiled. “She has been too little afraid of dying, and then it was we who
