And it hasn't helped.
I've only got worse.
Don't interrupt me; I know what you're going to say.
I know, too, what is involved.
But the time I have still, this time with you— let me do as I will."
Her face was flushed in the descending sun.
It was grave and still and full of an immense tenderness.
What are we saying? thought I with dry mouth; it's not possible we should be standing here discussing a thing that never can, and never shall be.
And it's Pat who is saying these things! Resigned, almost without regret, as if there was nothing to oppose to it any more, not even the pitiful shreds of a deceitful hope—Pat of all people, little more than a child still, whom it's my business to shield—Pat, suddenly gone far from me, familiar already and reconciled with the nameless thing on the other side.
"You mustn't say things like that," I murmured at last. "I only thought, perhaps we ought to ask the doctor first."
"We're asking nobody any more, nobody." She shook her lovely, frail head and looked at me with her dear eyes. "I don't want to know any more.
I only want to be happy still."
In the evening there was whispering and running to and fro in the corridors of the sanatorium.
Antonio arrived with an invitation.
There was to be a party, in a Russian's rooms.
"Can I go then, so simply?" I asked.
"Here?" replied Pat.
"You can do lots of things here you can't elsewhere," said Antonio, smiling.
The Russian was a dark, older man.
He occupied two rooms spread with numerous carpets.
On a chest stood schnapps bottles.
The rooms were in semidarkness, only candles burning.
Among the guests was a beautiful young Spaniard.
It was her birthday that was being celebrated.
It was a peculiar atmosphere in these nickering rooms— reminiscent of a dugout, in their half-light and the curious fellowship of these people all united in a common destiny.
"What will you "drink?" asked the Russian.
He had a warm deep voice.
"Whatever you have."
He brought a bottle of cognac and a carafe of vodka.
"Are you well?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied slightly embarrassed.
He offered me cigarettes with long cardboard tips.
We drank.
"I suppose there's a lot here strikes you as rather strange?" he observed.
"Not so much," I replied. "I'm not used to a specially normal life."
"Yes," said he with a dark glance at the Spanish girl. "It's a world to itself up here.
It changes people."
I nodded.
"A queer disease," he added thoughtfully. "It makes people more alive.
And better sometimes.
A mystic'disease.
It melts away the dross."
He rose, nodded to me, and went over to the Spanish girl, who smiled at him.
"A heavy theatrical, eh?" asked someone behind me.
A face with no chin.
A pimply forehead.
Restless, feverish eyes.
"I'm his guest," said I. "Aren't you?"
"He catches the women with it though," persisted the other, unheeding, "he does catch them.
The little one there too."