What does it matter to her really?
Who cares if you're ill?
They pretend to care, but they're jolly glad it's you and not them.
I'm a swine aren't I?'
Ashenden remembered how Mrs Chester had sat on a stone by the side of the road and wept.
'Aren't you afraid you'll make her very unhappy, not letting her come?'
'She must put up with that.
I've got enough with my own unhappiness without bothering with hers.'
Ashenden did not know what to say and they walked on in silence.
Suddenly Chester broke out irritably.
'It's all very well for you to be disinterested and unselfish, you're going to live.
I'm going to die, and God damn it, I don't want to die.
Why should I?
It's not fair.'
Time passed.
In a place like the sanatorium where there was little to occupy the mind it was inevitable that soon everyone should know that George Templeton was in love with Ivy Bishop.
But it was not so easy to tell what her feelings were.
It was plain that she liked his company, but she did not seek it, and indeed it looked as though she took pains not to be alone with him.
One or two of the middle-aged ladies tried to trap her into some compromising admission, but ingenuous as she was, she was easily a match for them.
She ignored their hints and met their straight questions with incredulous laughter.
She succeeded in exasperating them.
'She can't be so stupid as not to see that he's mad about her.'
'She has no right to play with him like that.'
'I believe she's just as much in love with him as he is with her.' 'Dr Lennox ought to tell her mother.'
No one was more incensed than McLeod.
'Too ridiculous.
After all, nothing can come of it.
He's riddled with TB and she's not much better.'
Campbell on the other hand was sardonic and gross.
'I'm all for their having a good time while they can.
I bet there's a bit of hanky-panky going on if one only knew, and I don't blame 'em.'
'You cad,' said McLeod.
'Oh, come off it.
Templeton isn't the sort of chap to play bumble-puppy bridge with a girl like that unless he's getting something out of it, and she knows a thing or two, I bet.'
Ashenden, who saw most of them, knew them better than any of the others.
Templeton at last had taken him into his confidence.
He was rather amused at himself.
'Rum thing at my time of life, falling in love with a decent girl.
Last thing I'd ever expected of myself.
And it's no good denying it, I'm in it up to the neck; if I were a well man I'd ask her to marry me tomorrow.
I never knew a girl could be as nice as that.
I've always thought girls, decent girls, I mean, damned bores.
But she isn't a bore, she's as clever as she can stick.
And pretty too.
My God, what a skin!
And that hair: but it isn't any of that that's bowled me over like a row of ninepins.
D'you know what's got me?
Damned ridiculous when you come to think of it.
An old rip like me. Virtue.
Makes me laugh like a hyena.