She was there to make up for her unkindness.
She would do her best under the circumstances.

She hoped he would tell lots of long stories to cover her wordlessness.
Gilbert emptied his glass and filled it again.

He was half conscious of dramatizing the episode as it unrolled itself and thrilled to think that this might be the last time that he would eat and drink in the only life that he knew.

Death, upon which he had looked hitherto with horror, didn't scare him if he went into it hand in hand with Joan.
With Alice trying, in her persistently gentle way, to cure him, life was unthinkable.

Life with Joan--there was that to achieve.