Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/495

Rh rejected by the kind room. I was distressed with a sense of ephemerality, of pale, erratic fragility.

Emily, in her full-blooded beauty, was at home. It is rare now to feel a kinship between a room and the one who inhabits it, a close bond of blood relation. Emily had at last found her place, and had escaped from the torture of strange, complex modern life. She was making a pie, and the flour was white on her brown arms. She pushed the tickling hair from her face with her arm, and looked at me with tranquil pleasure, as she worked the paste in the yellow bowl. I was quiet, subdued before her.

“You are very happy?” I said.

“Ah very!” she replied. “And you?—you are not, you look worn.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I am happy enough. I am living my life.”

“Don’t you find it wearisome?” she asked pityingly.

She made me tell her all my doings, and she marvelled, but all the time her eyes were dubious and pitiful.

“You have George here,” I said.

“Yes. He’s in a poor state, but he’s not as sick as he was.”

“What about the delirium tremens?”

“Oh, he was better of that—very nearly—before he came here. He sometimes fancies they’re coming on again, and he’s terrified. Isn’t it awful! And he’s brought it all on himself. Tom’s very good to him.”

“There’s nothing the matter with him—physically, is there?” I asked.