"She means business, then," thought Barry. "He won't come round," thought Gerda and their love pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of speech and Gerda sullen. "The _waste_ of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening, "when I've only got one day in the week, to spend it quarrelling about marriage. I've hundreds of things to talk about and tell you--interesting things, funny things--but I never get to them, with all this arguing we have to have first." "I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. We've said everything now, lots of times. There can't be any more. Tell me your things instead!" He told her, and they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own way, since you won't have it mine and I love you." But neither did. Their wills stood as stiff as two rocks over against one another. Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed more slowly than before. Her fragile, injured body was a battle-ground between her will and her love, and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could not go on. They would, he said, stop talking about it; they would put it in the background and go on as if it were not there, until such time as they could agree. So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the present and looked to no future, and, since better might not be, that had to do for the time. CHAPTER XI THAT WHICH REMAINS 1 Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. "You've been overworking," he told her. "You're not strong enough in these days to stand hard brain-work. You must give it up." For a fortnight she lay tired and passive, surrendered and inert, caring for nothing but to give up and lie still and drink hot milk. Then she struggled up and mooned about the house and garden, and cried weakly from time to time, and felt depressed and bored, and as if life were over and she were at the bottom of the sea.