She looked well and had country colour in her cheeks. She informed me that she was eating and sleeping well, going out for little walks with Mabel, painting bits of scenery again, and enjoying a complete change and rest; and yet, for all her brave description, the words somehow did not quite ring true. Those last words in particular did not ring true. There lay in her manner, just out of sight, I felt, this suggestion of the exact reverse--of unrest, shrinking, almost of anxiety. Certain small strings in her seemed over-tight. ‘Keyed-up’ was the slang expression that crossed my mind. I looked rather searchingly into her face as she was telling me this. ‘Only--the evenings,’ she added, noticing my query, yet rather avoiding my eyes, ‘the evenings are--well, rather heavy sometimes, and I find it difficult to keep awake.’ ‘The strong air after London makes you drowsy,’ I suggested, ‘and you like to get early to bed.’ Frances turned and looked at me for a moment steadily. ‘On the contrary, Bill, I dislike going to bed--here. And Mabel goes so early.’ She said it lightly enough, fingering the disorder upon my dressing-table in such a stupid way that I saw her mind was working in another direction altogether. She looked up suddenly with a kind of nervousness from the brush and scissors. ‘Billy,’ she said abruptly, lowering her voice, ‘isn’t it odd, but I _hate_ sleeping alone here? I can’t make it out quite; I’ve never felt such a thing before in my life. Do you--think it’s all nonsense?’ And she laughed, with her lips but not with her eyes; there was a note of defiance in her I failed to understand. ‘Nothing a nature like yours feels strongly is nonsense, Frances,’ I replied soothingly.