Reflections in a Golden Eye
Langdon said, 'And let me tell you one thing it's
     not worth it. Your health comes first because where would you be if you lost it? Leonora,
     do you want another card?'
    As Captain Penderton poured Mrs. Langdon's drink, he avoided her eyes. He loathed her so
     much that he could scarcely bear to look at her. She sat very quiet and stiff before the
     fire and she was knitting. Her face was deadly pale and her lips were rather swollen and
     chapped. She had soft, black eyes of feverish brilliance. She was twenty nine years old,
     two years younger than Leonora. It was said that she once had had a beautiful voice, but
     no one on this post had ever heard her sing. As the Captain looked at her hands, he felt a
     quiver of nausea. Her hands were slender to the point of emaciation, with long fragile
     fingers and delicate branchings of greenish veins from the knuckles to the wrist. They
     were sickly pale against the crimson wool of the sweater she was knitting. Frequently, in
     many mean and subtle ways, the Captain tried to hurt this woman. He disliked her first of
     all because of her total indifference to himself. The Captain despised her also for the
     fact that she had done him a service she knew, and kept secret, a matter which if
     gossiped about could cause him the most distressing embarrassment.
    'Another sweater for your husband?'
    'No,' she said quietly. 'I haven't decided just what I mean to do with this.'
    Alison Langdon wanted terribly to cry. She had been thinking of her baby, Catherine, who
     had died three years before. She knew that she should go home and let her houseboy,
     Anacleto, help her get to bed. She was in pain and nervous. Even the fact that she did not
     know for whom she was knitting this sweater was a source of irritation to her. She had
     taken to knitting only when she had learned about her husband. At first she had done a
     number of sweaters for him. Then she had knitted a suit for Leonora. During the first
     months she could not quite believe that he could be so faithless to her. When at last she
     had scornfully given up her husband, she had turned desperately to Leonora. There began
     one of those peculiar friendships between the wife who has been betrayed and the object of
     her husband's love. This morbid, emotional attachment, bastard of shock and jealousy, she
     knew was unworthy of her. Of its own accord it had soon ended. Now she felt the tears come
     to her eyes and she drank a little whiskey to brace herself, although liquor was forbidden
     her because of her heart She herself did not even like the taste of it. She much preferred
     a tiny glass of some syrupy liqueur, or a little sherry, or even a cup of coffee if it
     came to that. But now she drank the whiskey because it was there, and the others were
     drinking, and there was nothing else to do.
    'Weldon!' called out the Major suddenly, 'your wife is cheating! She peeked under the
     card to find if she wanted it.'
    'No, I didn't. You caught me before I had a chance to see it. What have you got there?'
    'I'm surprised at you, Moms,' said Captain Penderton. 'Don't you know you can never trust
     a woman at cards?'
    Mrs. Langdon watched this friendly badinage with an on the defensive expression that is
     often seen in the eyes of persons who have been ill for a long time and dependent upon the
     thoughtfulness, or negligence, of others. Since the night she had rushed home and hurt
     herself, she had felt in her a constant, nauseous shame. She was sure that everyone who
     looked at her must be thinking of what she had done. But as a matter of fact the scandal
     had been kept quite secret; besides those in the room only the doctor and the nurse knew
     what had happened and the young Filipino servant who had been with Mrs. Langdon since he
     was seventeen years old and who adored her. Now she stopped knitting and put the tips of
     her fingers to her cheekbones. She knew that she should get up and
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