Enthusiastic, vitally active as Sybil always had been, it required less penetration than Mrs. Brancepeth possessed to see that her amazing flood of vitality was deliberately outpoured for the sake of Charlie. This was the more evident to her by the fact that Sybil, when alone with her, subsided, sank into herself, and rested from an effort. At times, indeed, when Charlie was not there, she was almost peevish, which, in a woman of equable temper, is a sure sign of some overtaxed function. Such an instance occurred, so Mrs. Brancepeth thought, on an evening shortly before Bilton arrived at Davos. In the six weeks that they had now spent there, the elder woman had got to know the younger very well, to like her immensely, and to respect, with almost a sense of awe, the extreme cleverness with which she managed her affair. The ' affair ' was briefly, to her mind, to make Charlie take a normal interest in life again, without exciting an abnormal interest in herself—to transfer his affection, in fact, from herself to life.
They had dined together that evening at their small table at the Beau Site, and Sybil had traced loops on the tablecloth with a wineglass, and sketched threes and brackets to a centre with the prong of a fork.
' Yes, it sounds silly,' she said, ' but it is the most fascinating thing in the world to try to do anything which you at present believe yourself incapable of doing. I have no eye for colour at all, therefore two years ago I took violently, as Charlie remembers, to painting. I have no eye for balance, therefore now I spend my day in trying to execute complicated movements which depend entirely on it.'
Charlie's eye lit up.
' The quest of the impossible,' he said. ' How I sympathize!'
This was direct enough; with returning health he had got far greater directness. Mrs. Brancepeth waited for Sybil's reply; it came as direct as his.
