After that. when she chanced to pass the child, she
turned aside and would not look upon the child. She began not to
look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her lovely face a
pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare occasions
when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only was
a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was
noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would
get up suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally
to her own room. Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to
question her, but apart from the independence which commonly she
maintained towards Rosalie, Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude
upon her health. "What should be the matter? I look perfectly well,
don't I?"
"Doda, you don't. I've noticed it a long time."
"Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn't I'd say so."
Strike on!
Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend.
It was the evening, about ten o'clock. Doda was away for a week
at Brighton with the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow.
Harry was out with Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on
vacation from Oxford. Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight
when Benji was home. In the affliction that had come upon them, he
seemed to cling to Benji. Rosalie had persuaded him that evening
to go with Benji to a concert. Harry said the idea of anything like
that was detestable to him, but Rosalie had pleaded with him.
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