TESSA BELLAMY DID NOT feel so well again today, and lay wishing more than ever that she knew what were the matter with her. Several complaints had, it is true, been suggested to her by her doctors before leaving England, and she had come abroad with a perfectly open mind as to the possibility of most of them. Not one of them had proved itself entirely satisfactory. She wanted something that would settle down with her, simple and unexigent like an old family servant, so that they might get to know each other and understand each other’s ways. She was distressed by any suggestion of impermanence; she was a lonely woman. One had to have Something in one’s life. She lay on a velvet sofa in her bedroom with the head pulled round away from the window and wished that she were a religious woman and that it were time for lunch and that Sydney would soon come in.

Tessa had made a special arrangement with the Management about dieting, if that should be necessary. She paid an extra five per cent to have the menu for each meal brought up in advance, but so far she had liked the sound of everything so much and hated so much to give trouble that she had not asked for anything to be changed. She was not sure now whether she should continue the arrangement; by which, of course, one did deprive oneself of the pleasures of curiosity and suspense. On the other hand, the arrival of the menu gave one something to think about during the morning. She wished so much that she could make up her mind about this, turned her head among the cushions and with a sigh refolded her hands on her bosom. In Life one seemed always to be making decisions.

When Sydney came in she thought that Tessa, lying with closed eyes in the thick green dusk of the closed jalousies, must be asleep. She stood looking down for a moment and pretended to herself (to heighten a sense of her real security) that Tessa was dead. She was fond of Tessa, but imagination often divorces itself from feeling; all that occurred to her now was that in such a contingency she would have to leave Mrs Kerr and the sunshine and go back to London because Tessa, whose guest she was here, would no longer be able to pay the bills. Later, however, she produced a real pang of distress – how her own irritability and coldness would glare back at her when Tessa was gone!

Tessa put a hand up and patted her front hair, then opening her eyes looked up at Sydney thoughtfully, not as one who has just been awakened.

‘I’ve been thinking things over——’ she said.