By nine o'clock in the evening the Swedish masseur had arrived, and begun his manipulations. He promised that his patient should walk by the end of five or six days, and at the Squire's request agreed to put up at the Court for that period, giving several treatments a day. His fee made Peignton grimace, but he had to admit that it was cheap in comparison with weeks of inactivity. A telephone message brought a couple of bags filled with his clothes and toilette accessories, and he settled down to rest with the satisfaction of a man relieved from pain, and agreeably expectant of the future. Raynor was a good fellow; no one could have been kinder, and it certainly was a comfort to have the services of a trained man at this point, and to be housed in a big establishment, where there were possibilities of moving from room to room on the same floor, or even of being carried up and downstairs without feeling oneself too intolerable a burden. There were always two or three lazy fellows hanging about, who would be the better for using their muscles. Peignton gave a little shudder of distaste at the thought of the fluster which would have accompanied every movement, if he had accepted Mrs Mallison's invitation to the Cottage. Teresa, dear girl! had offered to nurse him, but the thing was not possible. Convention would have forbidden her attending him in bed, and how the deuce was he to get up with no one to help? He wondered between a laugh and a groan, if Mrs Mallison would have offered motherly services! And then he thought of Cassandra, standing slim and straight, the little deer-like head turned over her shoulder, looking at him with questioning eyes. What a picture she had made! Thinking of it conjured up other pictures. He envisaged them one by one, as he lay in the darkness. Cassandra on the day of Grizel Beverley's reception seated beside him in the closed car, the softness of chinchilla beneath her chin; Cassandra playing bridge, tapping the green baize with the long, lovely hand on which the emerald flashed; Cassandra at the church decorations standing with upraised arms against a background of leaves; Cassandra looking at him down the length of her own dining-table, the bare slimness of her throat rising above the bank of flowers. Each picture seemed more beautiful, more appealing than the last. He wondered dreamily what it was which formed this quality of appeal. Was it the touch of physical fragility which underlaid her bloom, or a finer spiritual need which called to a force within his own breast, a force which recognised the call! Always in Cassandra's presence he had the consciousness of waiting for an opportunity to serve; always he had the consciousness of need. He told himself he would be a happier man if it were ever given to him to be of service to Cassandra Raynor.