“Oh no,” she answered. “It isn’t that; it’s his feeling for me. Haven’t you heard him say a hundred times: ‘Poor little woman! she’s had such a beastly time!’ Don’t you understand? The quality of his love for me was his desire to protect me. It’s funny, isn’t it?--funny enough to make you cry. He thought I’d had such a bad time that it was up to him to keep every kind of trouble from me. He’s done something--with Etta Hudson. Well, and ever since he’s been dreading that it should get to my ears--and me in mourning for dear mother, and he alone and dreading--oh, _dreading_. And not a soul to speak to....” Again she looked up into Grimshaw’s eyes--and he was filled with an intolerable pity. She smiled, quaintly and bravely. “You see,” she said, “he was not afraid of what I should do but of what I should feel. I woke up and found him crying one night. Funny, isn’t it? that anyone should cry--about me. But I suppose he was feeling all that he thought _I_ should feel. He was identifying himself with me. And now he’s like that, and I don’t feel anything more about it. But,” she added, “that ought to satisfy you that I’m quite safe.” “Ah,” he said, “but so often--these strong passions take exactly the opposite turn. Do have Saunders handy.” “Robert, dear,” she said, “if he’s mad enough for that, I should not mind his killing me. I should be glad.” “Oh, dear child,” he answered, “would that be the way to help you to make a man of him?” She reflected for a moment. “Robert,” she said, “how right you always are! I seem to be so wise to myself until you prove how wrong I always am. I thought it the right way for me to speak to Dudley. If I only _had_.... And oh, Robert,” she said, “how good you are to us! How could we get on without you?” He said suddenly, as if it were a military command: “Don’t say that. I forbid it!” He added more softly: “I’ll go to Sir William Wells at once. Katya says he’s the best man of the kind in London.” “She ought to know,” she said. “Yes; go quickly. I’ve kept you talking only so as to let you know all there is to know. It’s difficult for a wife to talk about these things to a doctor. He might not believe it if I said that Dudley was so fond of me. But _you_ know, and you may make him believe it. For it all turns on that.... But I will have Saunders within call till you come back with him....” She went into the room, and, having touched the bell, stood looking down upon her husband with a contemplation of an infinite compassion. In the light of the stained glass at the end of a long passage of gloom she brought tears into Grimshaw’s eyes, and an infinite passion and tenderness into his whole being. His throat felt loosened, and he gasped. It was a passion for which there was neither outlet nor expression. He was filled with a desire for action without having any guidance as to what it was that he desired to do.