"Nicholas, you are six-and-thirty. He gave you seven years, and you have taken eight and a half."
"I know exactly how long I have taken," said Nicholas Ware. "I have known every day since the spring I turned five-and-thirty. And I want you to understand that this is not the comfort you appear to think it is."
"Why not?"
"Because a man who has been given seven years and has taken eight and a half is not a man who was told wrong," he said. "He is a man who is on borrowed time, and knows it to the day. And I have spent about eighteen months now waking up every morning and doing that sum. And it is a great deal worse than having a date."
Hannah Sedge sat on the floor of that garden room in November. "When did he last examine you?" she said.
There was a silence of about four seconds. "I beg your pardon?"
"Dr. Pell. When did he last examine you? Not write to you—examine you. Put his ear to your chest. Take the whole of an hour over it, the way he did when you were eight-and-twenty."
Nicholas Ware did not answer.
"Nicholas?"