But it was useless. She had brewed the
tea and had determined that he should drink a cup. Whether he desired
it or loathed it was a question irrelevant. He was appointed to
drink some tea, and she would not taste until he had drunk. This
self-sacrifice was her perverse pleasure.
"Come!... Please don't make it any more awkward for me."
With her right arm she raised the pillow and his head on it. He drank,
his sick lips curling awkwardly upon the rim of the cup, which
she held for him. When he had drunk, she put the cup down on the
night-table, and tidied his bed, as though he had been a naughty
child. And then she left him, and drank tea slowly, savouringly, by
herself in a chair near the dressing-table, out of the same cup.
VI
She had lied about the scullery door being open when she went
downstairs on the night of the disappearance of the bank-notes.
The scullery door had not been open. The lie was clumsy, futile,
ill-considered. It had burst out of the impulsiveness and generosity
of her nature. She had perceived that suspicion was falling, or might
fall, upon Louis Fores, and the sudden lie had flashed forth to defend
him. That she could ultimately be charged with having told the lie in
order to screen herself from suspicion had never once occurred to her.
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