“You aren’t well,” she said. “No, I don’t want to look at your tongue. Here, take off your cap;” and suddenly she ran her fingers smoothly and firmly over his temples, so that they seemed to explore deep places, cool and restful. “That soothes you, doesn’t it?” she said. “_That’s_ how I make my bread. But take care, dear thing, or it’ll be you that I shall be nursing next.” “It lies with you to cure it,” he answered. She uttered a painful “_Oh_!” and looked down the valley between her gloved fingers. When she took her hands down from her face, she said: “Look here! That’s not fair. You promised not to.” He answered: “But how can I help it? How can I help it?” She seemed to make her head grow rigid. “One thing at a time, then,” she said. “You know everything. What happened to him at the telephone?” And when he said that someone--when he was in a place where he ought not to have been--had recognized his voice, she said: “Oh!” and then again, “_Oh_! that explains.” Grimshaw looked at her, his dark eyes imploring. “It can be cured?” he said. “It ought to be,” she answered. “It depends. I’ll look at him.” “Oh, you _must_,” he answered. “Well, I will,” she retorted. “But, you understand, I must be paid my fee.” “Oh,” he said, “don’t rub it in just now.” “Well, you rubbed it in just now,” she mocked him. “You tried to get round my sympathies. I’ve got to harden myself to get back to where I was. You know you shook me. But I’m a lonely woman. My work’s all I’ve got.” “Katya!” he said. “You know your half of your father’s money is waiting for you. I’ve not spent a penny of it.” “I know you’re a dear,” she said, “but it doesn’t alter matters. I won’t take money from a man who won’t make a sacrifice for me.” “Ellida took her share,” he said. “Ellida’s Ellida,” she answered. “She’s a darling, but she’s not me. If you’d take the steps you might, you could have me, and I’d have father’s money. But that’s all there is to it. I’ll do all I can for Dudley Leicester. Don’t let’s talk about the other thing.” They came down to the hard road over the bank. “Now we shall see what’s under the weathercock,” she said. V IT was as if in the churchyard, amongst the old and slanting tombs, in the sunlight and in the extended fingers of the yews, there was the peace of God. In the highroad, as it passed through the little hamlet, not a single person stirred. The cottage doors stood open, and as they had passed they could hear even the ticking of the clocks. The dust on the highroad was stamped into little patterns by the feet of a flock of sheep that, from the hill above, they had seen progressing slowly at a great distance. “The peace of God,” Robert Grimshaw said. They were sitting in the small plastered porch of the little old church.