And she was growing stronger.

One afternoon she heard the doctor talking to Nevill in the passage. He

uttered the word "change."

"Shall I send her to Bournemouth?" said Nevill.

"Yes, yes. Good-morning. Or, better still, take her yourself to the

Riviera," sang out the doctor.

The door closed behind the eminent man, and Tyson went out immediately

afterwards.

He came home late that night, and she did not see him till the afternoon

of the following day, when he turned into the dining-room on his way out

of the house. He was nervously polite, and apologized for having an

appointment. She noticed that he looked tired and ill; but there was

another look in his face that robbed it of the pathos of illness, and she

saw that too.

"Nevill," said she, "I wish you'd go away for a bit."

"Where do you want me to go to?"

"Oh, anywhere." She considered a moment. "You'll be ill if you stop here.

You ought to go ever so far away. A sea-voyage would be the very thing."

"It wouldn't do me much good to go sea-voyaging by myself."

For a second her face brightened. "No--but--I shall be quite strong in

another fortnight--and then--I could go out to you wherever you were, and

we could come back together, couldn't we?"

There was no answer.

"You might go--to please me."

He laughed shortly. "I might go to please myself. But what's the good of

talking about it when you know I can't."

"Well, if you'd rather wait, there's the Riviera"--he colored

violently--"would that do for you?"

"Yes; I think it would 'do' for me--just about."

"Well--anywhere then. If I'm well enough to go to the Riviera, I'm--"

"You're not well enough to go to the Riviera."

"What makes you think that?" she asked gravely.

He looked away and muttered something about "Thompson," and "the

journey." Again that look of agonized comprehension!

She said nothing. She knew that he had lied. Ah, to what pitiful shifts

she had driven him!

He hurried off to his appointment, and she lay on her couch by the window

with clenched hands and closed eyelids. She had no sensations to speak

of; but thought came to her--confused, overwhelming thought--an agony

of ideas. She loved him. Ah, the shame of it! And that hidden hope of

hers became a terror. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's soul was struggling with its

immortality. The hot flare of summer was in the streets and in the

room; the old life was surging everywhere around her; above the brutal

roar and gust of it, blown from airy squares, flung back from throbbing

thoroughfares, she caught responsive voices, rhythmic, inarticulate

murmurs, ripples of the resonant joy of the world. Down there, in their

dim greenery, the very plane-trees were whispering together under the

shadow of the great flats.




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