you been these two years--well?--happy?

ANABEL. No, neither. How have you?

OLIVER. Yes, fairly happy. Have you been ill?

ANABEL. Yes, in France I was very ill.

OLIVER. Your old neuritis?

ANABEL. No. My chest. Pneumonia--oh, a complication.

OLIVER. How sickening! Who looked after you? Is it better?

ANABEL. Yes, it's a great deal better.

OLIVER. But, Anabel--we must fix a meeting. I say, wait just a moment.
Could I call on your people? Go into town with me one day. I don't know
whether Gerald intends to see you--whether he intends to ask you to
Lilley Close.

GERALD. Oh, it's all right.

ANABEL. He's no need. I'm fixed up there already.

GERALD. What do you mean?

ANABEL. I am at Lilley Close every day--or most days--to work with your
sister Winifred in the studio.

GERALD. What?--why, how's that?

ANABEL. Your father asked me. My father was already giving her some
lessons.

GERALD. And you're at our house every day?

ANABEL. Most days.

GERALD. Well, I'm--well, I'll be--you managed it very sharp, didn't you?
I've only been away a fort-night.

ANABEL. Your father asked me--he offered me twelve pounds a month--I
wanted to do something.

GERALD. Oh yes, but you didn't hire yourself out at Lilley Close as a
sort of upper servant just for twelve pounds a month.

ANABEL. You're wrong--you're wrong. I'm not a sort of upper servant at
all--not at all.

GERALD. Oh, yes, you are, if you're paid twelve pounds a month--three
pounds a week. That's about what father's sick-nurse gets, I believe.
You don't do it for twelve pounds a month. You can make twelve pounds
in a day, if you like to work at your little models: I know you can sell
your statuette things as soon as you make them.

ANABEL. But I CAN'T make them. I CAN'T make them. I've lost the
spirit--the--_joi de vivre_--I don't know what, since I've been ill. I
tell you I've GOT to earn something.

GERALD. Nevertheless, you won't make me believe, Anabel, that you've
come and buried yourself in the provinces--SUCH provinces--just to earn
father's three pounds a week. Why don't you admit it, that you came back
to try and take up the old threads.

OLIVER. Why not, Gerald? Don't you think we ought to take up the old
threads?

GERALD. I don't think we ought to be left without choice. I don't think
Anabel ought to come back and thrust herself on me--for that's what it
amounts to, after all--when one remembers what's gone before.

ANABEL. I D