I + 

The shape of her coif against the dim light was like some legendary thing’s head, and she was eating. I heard her. That she was old and very stout was all I could see. I could smell just a little, too. Poor Iris. + 

I asked if I might have news of Mrs. Storm. + 

“Ah, la dame anglaise!” She ate, but not finally. “Madame est assez bien, je crois. Mais pardon, monsieur. Je n’ai pas d’instructions à vous donner⁠—” + 

“But!” I pleaded. “But⁠—” + 

“Je regrette, monsieur. C’est pas ma faute, vous savez. Pardon.” + 

She was closing the door! Terse as you like. I was helpless. “Madame est assez bien, je crois!” Dear Heaven, but didn’t one know those assez biens! Isn’t there a company in Heaven wholly recruited from those who have been assez bien, and daily augmented by those who are assez bien! + 

I lifted up my voice. + 

“Pardon, monsieur.” + 

I lifted up my voice in vain. So I was active. She stared at me, panting. I withdrew my first impression as to her being a nun. She was no nun. She had a crucifix and a coif, but she was no nun. She was a woman scorned. She said many things and used many words which I did not understand. But I didn’t care. I somehow thought, you know, of Iris dying. + 

“I am here,” I said in effect, “and here I stay until I can speak to a doctor or a matron. I am sorry, but you have made me anxious as to the lady’s health.” + 

“Mais je vous l’ai déjà dit, jeune homme! Madame est assez bien!” + 

The ordinary dingy concierge’s lodge: a black stove, a table covered with frayed red cloth, a chair, a stool, an indescribable odour, a plate of food on the table⁠—bœuf bouilli, which is French for the salvaging of grey matter from liquid dungeons of onions, carrots and potatoes. I sat on the stool. It was unbelievable that her coif had ever been white. Somehow my eyes were transfixed by the small wooden crucifix which, like a dinghy on a choppy sea, rolled on her bosom as she ate. I wondered how long I would have to wait. I wondered if I could smoke. I wondered if this was one of those convent-nursing-homes. I wondered if one called a nun madame or mademoiselle. They were maidens presumably, so I supposed mademoiselle. + 

“On peut fumer, mademoiselle?” + 

I was wrong. She looked at me with contempt. “C’est défendu, monsieur.” + 

“Merci, madame.” + 

I wondered if she really could be a nun. I wondered if one could tip a nun. Out of sheer hatred one acquires a passion for tipping in France and Italy. Detestable it was on this detestable day to sit like this, being hated. I made a muttering noise and gave her a ten-franc note, and it was in a more amiable spirit that she went on with her salvaging. At last there were only two bits of carrot and an awful looking onion left to engage her attention, and I felt that one might perhaps converse. + 

I was right about her being no nun. She was a lay-sister, she said. And this place, she told me, was a convent-nursing-home. “Nous avons ici,” she was pleased to add, “la clientèle européenne la plus chic.” + 

Perhaps that was the worst stroke of that day, so far. Iris among a clientèle européenne la plus chic.⁠ ⁠… One saw the cosmopolitan divorcées, their secret illnesses and guileful pains, their nasty little coquetries and the way they would blackmail their lovers with their sufferings, and one felt the sticky nightclub breath of all the silly, common harlotries of England, France, America. My poor ten-franc note must have seemed pathetic to this old lay-sister, who probably thought nothing of receiving a mille from an anxious Dago. + 

I had until then been trying not to wonder about Iris in the vile shadow of a prison. Suddenly I was furiously hot. What on earth was I doing here! Intruding where I was not wanted! I was about to go, to run, when the lay-sister was as though distracted from the last piece of carrot by the opening of a door in the back room. Frantically she hurried towards it. It would look too silly of me to run now. I could but ask, anyhow. + 

The lay-sister’s voice, voluble, vindictive, explanatory. Much good my ten francs had done! Then steps came towards me, into the lodge. “Eh,” I said. How afraid one always is of the callous French doctors with their cynical eyes and purple beards.⁠ ⁠… + 

A man, bald, sharp-featured as a bird, in a rough brown greatcoat, a tired-looking, an anxious-looking, middle-aged⁠—Englishman! + 

“Masters! Conrad Masters!” + 

“Well,” muttered that anxious-looking man. He looked just the same when he was playing bridge. He was always playing bridge, that man. And he said he hated playing bridge. That kind of man. “Well? How are you?” + 

“Glad,” I said, “glad it’s no worse. Glad it’s only you. I was afraid of a purple beard.” + 

“And how did you get here?” A man given to muttering, that. One could hear what he said or not just as one pleased. One couldn’t, you understand, be afraid of Conrad Masters. + 

“Masters, the fight I’ve had with this Cerberus to see you!” + 

“Rules⁠ ⁠… must have rules, you know.⁠ ⁠…” A decidedly undecided man. Soft-speaking but not plausible, a combination peculiarly English. A man of nerves. Shifty without suavity⁠ ⁠… and then, suddenly, apt to bite your head off like a very captain of men: “And how did you know Mrs. Storm was ill? Here?” + 

“Oh,” I said. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” And I thought of many things. Of Conrad Masters, of “Should a doctor tell?” of Cherry-Marvel, that confidant at third-hand, of Mrs. Conrad Masters. A dashing lady, that. + 

“Who but Cherry-Marvel told me!” said I. + 

“God in Heaven, that man!” + 

But Iris swept out of my mind her doctor’s problematical indiscretions to his dashing wife.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Ill,” he muttered. “Decidedly ill⁠ ⁠… mm.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I heard,” I said desperately, “that she’d had a sort of operation⁠—” + 

“There’s been no operation!” snapped that captain of men. “Simply maddens a man, the way these things get about.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Well, I’m only repeating what I heard, Masters. And you can’t hope for secrecy once our friend gets hold of anything⁠—” + 

“Who said anything about secrecy?” A dangerous, feline muttering. “I don’t want secrecy.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Silence. Anxieties walked across it arm-in-arm with that lank man’s doubtful heat. + 

“I say, Masters, is she⁠—is she very ill? But, of course, if I’m intruding.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Those worried eyes were fixed on the feet stuck far out from the chair on which he lay as though exhausted. The lay-sister appeared to be pottering about in the next room. “Thinking of Donna Guelãra, are you? Haven’t much faith in me and Martel-Bonnard, have you?” Faintly amused those worried eyes looked to be. That was that man’s way. You would think he was being shifty with you when he might be just laughing at you. + 

Some would speak well, very well, of Dr. Masters; whilst others almost libellously, saying that, working as he did with Eugene Martel-Bonnard, the surgeon, he couldn’t be over-scrupulous in advising profitable but unnecessary operations. Martel-Bonnard’s wife wore a famous pearl rope, of which it was said that each pearl had been bought at the price of a woman’s life. But a brilliant surgeon’s life. Martel-Bonnard would say, is full of drawbacks. He charged accordingly. I think that he and Mrs. Masters must have bullied Masters every now and then⁠—not that he wouldn’t have looked worried in the Elysian Fields. Between them, those three had once made poor Anna Estella Guelãra very sorry she had ever left Chile. She was quite well, Martel-Bonnard said she was very ill, he almost killed her, then he saved her, and how he hurt her! “Naturally,” smiled Martel-Bonnard. “Such things hurt. But, my friend, she was⁠—pouf!⁠—but for me.” How one would have liked to operate on that sleek little man, unsuccessfully! He despised you if you differed from him, operated on you if you were fool enough, and robbed you according to a special system he had of discounting the exchange. One hundred thousand francs, poor Anna Estella’s life had cost her that time. And pain, such as falls only to the lot of women! + 

“But. Masters, it’s surely not as bad a case as that!” + 

“Mm⁠ ⁠… not as bad? Well⁠ ⁠… different shall we say?” + 

“But that was an internal operation! You just said⁠—” + 

“Quite. That’s why it’s different.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Talking with Conrad Masters was like playing a game in which he who made out the most of the other’s words scored the most points.⁠ ⁠… But Iris alone here, in this obscure place as full of crucifixes as a cemetery! + 

“I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the stool. “I’m intruding.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You’re all right,” he mumbled. “So you heard about it from that femme fatale, did you? Damn that man! Bla, bla, bla!” + 

Those worried but faintly amused eyes were on me. “Been hearing quite a lot about you lately. Nurses would have your dossier complete by now if they could understand English. You seem to have put your foot in it somewhere. Rather sorry for you if.⁠ ⁠…” + 

This bantering⁠ ⁠… medical bantering! Only doctors dare do it. “Well, how are we today?” But by paying close attention to the game I had scored one point. She was delirious. So far, delirious. Then⁠ ⁠… “if!” + 

“Masters,” I said, “are you telling me that she is dying?” + 

“Mm⁠ ⁠…” he muttered impatiently, and as he jumped up from his chair the rough brown greatcoat seemed to fill the dingy lodge. It smelt of England, that coat. And, protruding from it, that sharp, naked, weary face with the worried eyes.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here, Masters⁠—” + 

“Here you are,” he muttered. I could not understand why he muttered. “Here you are” until I found a cigarette in one hand and one of those wretched spirit-lighters in the other. A man without conviction even in his ability to strike a match.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Known her for years,” he muttered towards his feet. “At Deauville that year⁠ ⁠… terrible for her. Poor child.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Masters, you said Donna Guelãra might die. You know you did. But she didn’t, did she?” + 

He looked at me sharply. “If only she’d help herself, lift a finger to help herself! That’s what beats a man. Doesn’t lift one finger, she doesn’t.” + 

“Oh!” I said, trying to look reasonable. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, accommodate myself to the idea of Iris dying. “I suppose this is the crisis, is it, Masters?” + 

The rough greatcoat gave one vindictive flounce, filled the room. “Crisis! The way you people talk of crisis this and crisis that! Hear a word once and stick to it through life! ‘When does the crisis pass?’ There is no ‘crisis’ in most of these infernal things. Malaria, pneumonia, a few others⁠—yes, crisis, know where you are. But in these things the patient just continues ill, two, three, four weeks, might live, might not. Lysis, not crisis. Crisis!” + 

“Sorry. Lysis.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh, here!” He suddenly began fumbling in an ancient pocketbook, from which he extracted a small folded piece of paper. “Might interest you,” he muttered. + 

Scrawled in pencil across the slip of paper were what looked like two names. That indecipherable scrawl! At last I made out the two names: Hilary’s and mine. + 

“She said, should either of these two happen somehow to hear I am ill and call, just be nice to them, please. Her very words.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh!” I said. And I went on staring at the slip of paper. It was a rather grubby slip of paper. And those two scrawled names were like a faint cry of loneliness. + 

“Known her for years,” Masters was muttering. “Nice! First tells me not to tell anyone, then to be ‘nice’ to you two.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I gave him back the slip of paper. I don’t know why, and now I wish I hadn’t. I would like to have it now, beside that fiver. “Nice, fivers are.⁠ ⁠…” Thoughtful Iris! She knew her friends, she did. Lying lonely here⁠ ⁠… and having an afterthought about Hilary⁠—and me! “If they should somehow happen to hear and call.” Poor Guy hadn’t a mention. She wasn’t for putting any strain on Guy’s lawfulness. But why lawfulness? I looked at Conrad Masters. + 

“Septic poisoning,” said Masters. “That’s the trouble.” + 

That meant very little to me, for never was a man so ill-informed about such things. “But,” I said doubtfully to those gentle-worried eyes, and he murmured: + 

“Sure you’re not thinking of ptomaine poisoning? Not that that isn’t quite enough to be going on with.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Pain,” I said. “Good Lord, pain.⁠ ⁠…” All I could think of was pain, pain, pain. One can almost feel the stabs of someone’s pain. Worst of all, one can mentally hear the faint screams of a voice just recognisable. Conrad Masters, the sight of him, reminded me vividly of Anna Estella’s pain. Once, from a waiting-room, I had heard her screaming. “Pain?” I said. + 

“Oh, no⁠ ⁠… no.” He weighed the matter. “Nothing to speak of. Just keep still, that’s the main thing. Very still, for weeks and weeks. Long business, you know. But what worries a man is that she doesn’t try to help herself at all. Letting herself go⁠ ⁠… can’t tell whether consciously or not, but somewhere inside her just not caring. I’ve been sharp with her.⁠ ⁠… Nice business for me, isn’t it? Good Lord, nice! If only she’d take a pull, pull herself together⁠ ⁠… someone just give her mind a jab somehow. No good talking, of course. If she won’t, she won’t. Lies there, you know, just not caring.⁠ ⁠…” He was drawing on a fur-lined glove, and it was to that he spoke; almost, one thought, shyly. A curious, complex gentleman. “She’s said once or twice she’d like to see you and⁠ ⁠… well, learn you a thing or two. Some stuff about roses and dandelions. You seem to have made a gaffe somewhere, and it’s quite on her mind to tell you about it. Hope I’m not giving anything away⁠ ⁠… but might do her good just to see you, feel you’re round about. You can’t tell. We’ll see how she is tomorrow. Extraordinary, I’ve found it, the way a woman will wake up for a second from days of delirium for no other purpose than to feel lonely.⁠ ⁠… Not awake now, though. Ill, this evening. Can’t really, you see, be iller if she tried. It will be good news, really good news, if she is alive in the morning. That’s as much as I can say. Sorry.⁠ ⁠… Well, I must snatch some dinner.⁠ ⁠…” + 

We were outside. The rain had ceased, it was much warmer. The Masters’s Renault, sleek and shining black but for the scarlet wheels, dwarfed my taxi. + 

Septic poisoning. I began to remember a little about that. I remembered two words which seemed very like “septic poisoning” in reports of trials of wretched women who had “operated.” Surely, Masters couldn’t⁠ ⁠… she had, after all, trusted me⁠—“be nice to him”⁠—and I must at once think the worst thing. Oh, God, how foul a thing a man’s mind is, how foul! But, Iris, dear Iris, why is one able to think of these awful things in connection with you! + 

“There’s always hope, you know,” Masters was muttering. “Pity you kept your taxi. I could have dropped you. And Donna Guelãra didn’t die, did she?” + 

But how Anna Estella had desired to live! “Die, me!” she had later screamed with laughter. + 

Iris had trusted me. “Be nice to him”⁠—her very words. And I had thought that⁠ ⁠… + 

“Masters, you won’t mind my coming round again? Perhaps tonight?” + 

“Sleep here, if you like,” he smiled. “I’ll be coming myself for a second, about midnight. Wife’s got a party. Like to come? Rather good bridge. Well, please yourself.⁠ ⁠…” + 