There Rex Donaldson told Theresa at length about his theories and some of his recent experiments. She understood very little but listened in a spellbound manner, thinking to herself:
“How clever Rex is—and how absolutely adorable!”
Her fiancé paused once and said rather doubtfully:
“I’m afraid this is dull stuff for you, Theresa.”
“Darling, it’s too thrilling,” said Theresa, firmly. “Go on. You take some of the blood of the infected rabbit—?”
Presently Theresa said with a sigh:
“Your work means a terrible lot to you, my sweet.”
“Naturally,” said Dr. Donaldson.
It did not seem at all natural to Theresa. Very few of her friends did any work at all, and if they did they made extremely heavy weather about it.
She thought as she had thought once or twice before, how singularly unsuitable it was that she should have fallen in love with Rex Donaldson. Why did these things, these ludicrous and amazing madnesses, happen to one? A profitless question. This had happened to her.
She frowned, wondered at herself. Her crowd had been so gay—so cynical. Love affairs were necessary to life, of course, but why take them seriously? One loved and passed on.
But this feeling of hers for Rex Donaldson was different, it went deeper. She felt instinctively that here there would be no passing on… Her need of him was simple and profound. Everything about him fascinated her. His calmness and detachment, so different from her own hectic, grasping life, the clear, logical coldness of his scientific mind, and something else, imperfectly understood, a secret force in the man masked by his unassuming slightly pedantic manner, but which she nevertheless felt and sensed instinctively.
In Rex Donaldson there was genius—and the fact that his profession was the main preoccupation of his life and that she was only a part—though a necessary part—of existence to him only heightened his attraction for her. She found herself for the first time in her selfish pleasure-loving life content to take second place. The prospect fascinated her. For Rex she would do anything—anything!
“What a damned nuisance money is,” she said, petulantly. “If only Aunt Emily were to die we could get married at once, and you could come to London and have a laboratory full of test tubes and guinea pigs, and never bother anymore about children with mumps and old ladies with livers.”
Donaldson said:
“There’s no reason why your aunt shouldn’t live for many years to come—if she’s careful.”
Theresa said despondently:
“I know that….”
In the big double-bedded room with the old-fashioned oak furniture, Dr. Tanios said to his wife:
“I think that I have prepared the ground sufficiently. It is now your turn, my dear.”
He was pouring water from the old-fashioned copper can into the rose-patterned china basin.
Bella Tanios sat in front of the dressing table wondering why, when she combed her hair as Theresa did, it should not look like Theresa’s!
There was a moment before she replied. Then she said:
“I don’t think I want—to ask Aunt Emily for money.”
“It’s not for yourself, Bella, it’s for the sake of the children. Our investments have been so unlucky.”
His back was turned, he did not see the swift glance she gave him—a furtive, shrinking glance.
She said with mild obstinacy:
“All the same, I think I’d rather not… Aunt Emily is rather difficult. She can be generous but she doesn’t like being asked.” Drying his hands, Tanios came across from the washstand.
“Really, Bella, it isn’t like you to be so obstinate. After all, what have we come down here for?”
She murmured: