“Ah, she’ll do now,” said the doctor to himself, grinning a saturnine grin, “when a woman shows her pet weakness she’s out of danger.” He put back the screen. “I am thankful to say,” he said to her, “you are the sole sufferer, and you’ll soon be all right again.” Humphrey was well then. She shut her dazed eyes and tried to think, but she could only hover off into drowsiness. After a time she opened her eyes again and said, “I would like my maid, perhaps you would tell Sir Humphrey that I am better.” “Your husband hardly requires the information,” said the doctor drily. “I shall leave Lady Strange in your hands, Sir Humphrey, and I shall remain on the premises in case you want me.” His wife turned her eyes away and began searching for her handkerchief, he stooped and gave it to her. The sweat still clung to his ghastly forehead and hung on his hair. “He said you were not hurt,” she said, “you look as if you were.” “It’s been rather a disturbing day,” he said, with sudden bitterness. “Never mind me, I’ll be as jolly as a sandboy after a bath.” She turned herself uneasily on the pillow and shut her eyes. It was horrible to have him there above her. “Poor little child, poor little unfinished thing!” he thought pitifully. “Shall I send your maid, dear?” “Yes, please, and won’t—oh, won’t you rest?” “Yes, I’m off,” he said, in his old cheery voice, and he went outside the door and watched there till morning. She was very white the next morning, and kept falling off into drowsy little sleeps, but she declared she was all right and meant to get up; the necessity of staying in bed was a new one and she loathed it. She felt more in her husband’s power, lying there ill; she grew suspicious too, for the first time in her life, and set herself to search for meanings in looks. “I am demoralized,” she kept repeating. Then she turned her face from the light, and neither spoke nor looked except when she absolutely had to. Strange could make nothing at all of her, and he soon left her for sheer mercy’s sake. When he had gone she raised herself up and rang the bell. “Give me what I am to take and then leave me for two hours, I will sleep if I can.” The girl brought her a bowl of beef-tea, and she plunged heroically into it. “I am doing my duty,” she said to herself, with a sneer, “but oh, will this liquid never get less? on the contrary, it seems to increase. You won’t let me be disturbed, will you, Gill?” she said. As soon as the girl had gone she got up and locked the door, then she rolled up her hair, put on a dressing-gown, and sat down on the floor. “I have two hours in which to have it out with myself—this horror made manifest,” she said. “How was it that this most natural of all complications never entered my head? I wasn’t even warned by those new and altogether abominable feelings of weakness.”