Mrs Mercado said with a sideways glance at me: Shes very romantic-looking, nurse, dont you think so? The sort of woman things happen to.
Have many things happened to her? I asked.
Well, her first husband was killed in the war when she was only twenty.
I think thats very pathetic and romantic, dont you?
Its one way of calling a goose a swan, I said dryly.
Oh, nurse! What an extraordinary remark!
It was really a very true one.
The amount of women you hear say, If Donald or Arthur or whatever his name was hadonly lived.
And I sometimes think but if he had, hed have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
It was getting dark and I suggested that we should go down.
Mrs Mercado agreed and asked if I would like to see the laboratory.
My husband will be there working.
I said I would like to very much and we made our way there.
The place was lighted by a lamp, but it was empty.
Mrs Mercado showed me some of the apparatus and some copper ornaments that were being treated, and also some bones coated with wax.
Where can Joseph be? said Mrs Mercado.
She looked into the drawing-office, where Carey was at work.
He hardly looked up as we entered, and I was struck by the extraordinary look of strain on his face.
It came to me suddenly: This man is at the end of his tether. Very soon, something will snap.
And I remembered somebody else had noticed that same tenseness about him.
As we went out again I turned my head for one last look at him.
He was bent over his paper, his lips pressed very closely together, and that deaths head suggestion of his bones very strongly marked.
Perhaps it was fanciful, but I thought that he looked like a knight of old who was going into battle and knew he was going to be killed.
And again I felt what an extraordinary and quite unconscious power of attraction he had.
We found Mr Mercado in the living-room.
He was explaining the idea of some new process to Mrs Leidner.
She was sitting on a straight wooden chair, embroidering flowers in fine silks, and I was struck anew by her strange, fragile, unearthly appearance. She looked a fairy creature more than flesh and blood.
Mrs Mercado said, her voice high and shrill: Oh, there you are, Joseph. We thought wed find you in the lab.
He jumped up looking startled and confused, as though her entrance had broken a spell.
He said stammeringly: I I must go now.
Im in the middle of the middle of He didnt complete the sentence but turned towards the door.
Mrs Leidner said in her soft, drawling voice: You must finish telling me some other time.
It was very interesting.
She looked up at us, smiled rather sweetly but in a far-away manner, and bent over her embroidery again.
In a minute or two she said: There are some books over there, nurse.
Weve got quite a good selection.
Choose one and sit down.
I went over to the bookshelf.
Mrs Mercado stayed for a minute or two, then, turning abruptly, she went out.
As she passed me I saw her face and I didnt like the look of it.
She looked wild with fury.
In spite of myself I remembered some of the things Mrs Kelsey had said and hinted about Mrs Leidner.
I didnt like to think they were true because I liked Mrs Leidner, but I wondered, nevertheless, if there mightnt perhaps be a grain of truth behind them.
I didnt think it was all her fault, but the fact remained that dear ugly Miss Johnson, and that common little spitfire Mrs Mercado, couldnt hold a candle to her in looks or in attraction.
And after all, men are men all over the world.
You soon see a lot of that in my profession.
Mercado was a poor fish, and I dont suppose Mrs Leidner really cared two hoots for his admiration but his wife cared.
If I wasnt mistaken, she minded badly and would be quite willing to do Mrs Leidner a bad turn if she could.
I looked at Mrs Leidner sitting there and sewing at her pretty flowers, so remote and far away and aloof.
I felt somehow I ought to warn her.