The rampart of defence was soon to fall. A financial crisis was threatened, and Signor Provana was wanted at his office in New York. He told his wife that he might be able to come back to London in a fortnight, allowing ten days for the double passage, and four for his business; but if things were troublesome in America he might be a good deal longer. "I shall try to be home in time to take you to Marienbad," he told her. "But if I am not here, Lady Okehampton will take you, and you can get Lady Susan to go with you and keep you in good spirits. I had a talk with your aunt last night, and she promised to take you under her wing." "I don't want to be under anybody's wing; and Aunt Mildred will bore me to death if I see much of her at Marienbad." "Oh, you will have your favourite Susie for amusement, and your aunt to see that she doesn't lead you into mischief. Lady Susan is a shade too adventurous for my taste." This idea of Marienbad was a new thing. A certain nervous irritability had been growing upon Vera of late, and her husband had been puzzled and uneasy, and had called in a nerve specialist recommended by Lady Okehampton, one of those new lights whom everybody believe in for a few seasons. After a quiet talk with Vera, that grave authority had suggested a rest cure, the living death of six weeks in a nursing home; and on this being vehemently protested against by the patient, had offered Marienbad as an alternative. Provana had been startled by this sudden change in his wife's temper, from extreme gentleness and an evident desire to please him, to a kind of febrile impatience and irritability; and remembering her curious agitation on the evening of his home-coming, her pallid cheeks and passionate tears, he had an uneasy feeling that these strange moods had a common source, and that there was something mysterious and unhappy that it was his business to discover before he left her. He came to her room early on the day of his departure, so early that she had only just left her bedroom, and was still wearing the loose white muslin gown in which she had breakfasted. She was sitting on her low sofa in a listless attitude, looking at the faces on the wall--Browning, Shelley, Byron--the faces of the inspired dead who were more alive than the uninspired living; but at her husband's entrance she started to her feet and went to meet him. "You are not going yet," she exclaimed. "I thought the boat-train did not leave till the afternoon." "It does not; but I must give the interval to business. I have come to bid you good-bye." "I am very sorry you are obliged to go," she said. "For God's sake do not lie to me. For pity's sake let there be no pretending." He took both her hands and drew her to him, looking at her with an imploring earnestness.