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A WORD or two before I start. For a month I had marked in her a strange pensiveness, not silence exactly, I mean pensiveness. This was also something I noticed suddenly. She was seated at her work, inclining her head over her sewing, unaware that I was looking at her. Then all at once it struck me how slender she'd grown, thin, her face so pale, her lips ashen-all this, taken together with her pensive air, came as a severe and sudden shock. I had already noticed her dry little cough previously, during the night especially. I stood up at once and, without telling her, set off to ask Doctor Schroeder to call.
Schroeder arrived the following day. She was most taken aback and looked from one to another of us.