She obeyed him by a great effort. She talked to him--of what, she hardly knew!--about her months in London and Torquay--: about her illness--the farm--Hester Martin--and Cicely.
When she came to speak of her friendship with Cicely, he smiled in surprise, his eyes still shut.
'That's jolly, dearest. You remember, I didn't like her. She wasn't at all nice to you--once. But thank her for me--please.'
'She's here now, George, she brought me here. She wouldn't let me come alone.'
'God bless her!' he said, under his breath. 'I'll see her--to-morrow. Now go on talking. You won't mind if I go to sleep? They won't let you stop here, dear. You'll be upstairs. But you'll come early--won't you?'
They gave him morphia, and he went to sleep under her eyes. Then the night nurse came in, and the surgeon from the hospital opposite, with Howson. And Cicely took Nelly away.
Cicely had made everything ready in the little bare room upstairs. But when she had helped Nelly to undress, she did not linger.
'Knock on the wall, if you want me. It is only wood, I shall hear directly.'
Nelly kissed her and she went. For nothing in her tender service that day was Nelly more grateful to her.
Then Nelly put out her light, and drawing up the blind, she sat for long staring into the moonlight night. The rain had stopped, but the wind was high over the sea, which lay before her a tumbled mass of waves, not a hundred yards away. To her right was the Casino, a subdued light shining through the blinds of its glass verandahs, behind which she sometimes saw figures passing--nurses and doctors on their various errands. Were there men dying there to-night--like her George?
The anguish that held her, poor child, was no simple sorrow. Never--she knew it doubly now--had she ceased to love her husband. She had told Farrell the truth--'If George now were to come in at that door, there would be no other man in the world for me!' And yet, while George was dying, and at the very moment that he was asking for her, she had been in Farrell's arms, and yielding to his kisses. George would never know; but that only made her remorse the more torturing. She could never confess to him--that indeed was her misery. He would die, and her unfaith would stand between them for ever.