‘And with very good reason,’ said he. ‘Think how rapidly we have been travelling; think what we have been doing since. Why, you were on foot the whole morning. You are tired; so am I, for that matter. I was thinking of saying so, but you are always so hard upon my little fatigues. What a comfort for me to find that you, too, for once in a way, can give in!’ Thus he tried to take her favourite part and laugh her out of her terrors. She consented with a smile more serious than her gravity had been of old, and they went back to their room and dined ‘quietly;’ and he sat and read to her, according to the picture of English domesticity which she had drawn out with smiles a few hours before. It was so soon after that tirade of hers that they could not but remember it, both of them. As it happened, there was nothing but a Tauchnitz novel to read (and who that has been ill or sad, or who has had illness or sadness to solace in a foreign place, but has blessed the novels of Tauchnitz?) and he read it, scarcely knowing what the words were which fluttered before his eyes. And as for her, she did not take much notice of the story either, but lay on the sofa, and listened, partly to his voice, partly to the distant sound of the band playing, with strange heaviness and aching in her heart. It was not that she wished to be out listening to the band, moving about in the warm air, hearing the babble of society--that was not what she cared for; but to be lying there out of the current; to have dropped aside out of the stream; to be unable for the common strain of life! So he read, sadly thinking, not knowing what he read; and she half listened, not knowing what she was listening to. It was the first time, and the first time is the worst, though the best. ‘It is only once in a way,’ he said to her, when the long evening was over; ‘to-morrow you will be as well as ever.’ And so she was. It was the most natural thing in the world that both or either of them should be tired, once in a way.