"I'm past praying for, Robby," said she. "There I've been fast asleep again."
"That's good, though," I replied.
"No." She propped herself on her elbows. "I don't want to sleep so much."
"Why not?
There are times when I'd like to sleep right through the next fifty years."
"But you wouldn't like being fifty years older when you waked up."
"I don't know.
You could only tell that afterwards."
"Are you depressed?" she asked.
"No," said I. "The contrary.
I've just decided that we are going to dress and go out and have a perfectly marvellous supper.
Everything that you most like.
And we'll get a bit drunk as well." "That's fine," she replied. "But does that belong to our bankrupt state, do you think?"
"Yes," said I, "a direct consequence."
Chapter XXI
In the middle of October Jaffe sent for me.
It was ten in the morning, but the weather was so dull that the light was still burning in the clinic.
It mingled with the misty gloom from outside to make a pallid, sickly brightness. Jaffe was sitting alone in his big consulting room.
He raised his bald, shiny head as I entered. He pointed ill-humouredly to the big window against which the rain was beating.
"What do you think of this damned weather?"
I gave a shrug.
"Let's hope it will stop soon."
"That won't stop."
He looked at me and said nothing.
Then he took up a pencil from the desk, contemplated it, tapped with it on the table and put it aside again.
"I can imagine why you sent for me," said I.
Jaffe muttered something.
I waited a moment.
Then I said:
"Pat must go away soon now, I suppose—"
"Yes."
Jaffe stared moodily ahead.
"I had reckoned on the end of October.
But with this weather—" He reached again for the silver pencil.
The wind flung a shower of rain rattling against the window.
It sounded like distant machine-gun fire.
"When do you think she should go?" I asked.
Lifting his eyes he looked at me suddenly full in the face.
"To-morrow," said he.
For a second I felt the ground go from under my feet.
The air was like cotton wool and stuck in my lungs.
Then it passed, and I asked as calmly as I could—but my voice came from far away as if somebody else spoke: "Has it suddenly become so much worse?"
Jaffe shook his head vigorously and stood up.
"If it had changed so quickly, she wouldn't be able to travel at all," he declared unamiably. "It is better, that's all.
With this weather every day is a risk.
Colds and so on—"
He took some letters from his desk.
"I have already made arrangements.
You have only to go.
I've known the doctorin charge of the sanatorium since my student days.