Lying in her bed in the spare room, Harriett heard the opening and shutting of Robin’s door. She still thought of Prissie’s paralysis as separating them, still felt inside her a secret, unacknowledged satisfaction. Poor little Prissie. How terrible. Her pity for Priscilla went through and through her in wave after wave. Her pity was sad and beautiful and at the same time it appeased her pain. In the morning Priscilla told her about her illness. The doctors didn’t understand it. She ought to have had a stroke and she hadn’t had one. There was no reason why she shouldn’t walk except that she couldn’t. It seemed to give her pleasure to go over it, from her first turning round and round in the street (with helpless, shaking laughter at the queerness of it), to the moment when Robin bought her the wheel chair.... Robin ... Robin ... “I minded most because of Robin. It’s such an _awful_ illness, Hatty. I can’t move when I’m in bed. Robin has to get up and turn me a dozen times in one night.... Robin’s a perfect saint. He does everything for me.” Prissie’s voice and her face softened and thickened with voluptuous content. “... Do you know, Hatty, I had a little baby. It died the day it was born.... Perhaps some day I shall have another.” Harriett was aware of a sudden tightening of her heart, of a creeping depression that weighed on her brain and worried it. She thought this was her pity for Priscilla. Her third night. All evening Robin had been moody and morose. He would hardly speak to either Harriett or Priscilla. When Priscilla asked him to do anything for her he got up heavily, pulling himself together with a sigh, with a look of weary, irritated patience. Prissie wheeled herself out of the study into the drawing-room, beckoning Harriett to follow. She had the air of saving Robin from Harriett, of intimating that his grumpiness was Harriett’s fault. “He doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said. She sat up till eleven, so that Robin shouldn’t be thrown with Harriett in the last hours. Half the night Harriett’s thoughts ran on, now in a darkness, now in thin flashes of light. “Supposing, after all, Robin wasn’t happy? Supposing he can’t stand it? Supposing.... But why is he angry with _me?_” Then a clear thought: “He’s angry with me because he can’t be angry with Priscilla.” And clearer. “He’s angry with me because I made him marry her.” She stopped the running and meditated with a steady, hard deliberation. She thought of her deep, spiritual love for Robin; of Robin’s deep spiritual love for her; of his strength in shouldering his burden. It was through her renunciation that he had grown so strong, so pure, so good. Something had gone wrong with Prissie. Robin, coming home early on Saturday afternoon, had taken Harriett for a walk. All evening and all through Sunday it was Priscilla who sulked and snapped when Harriett spoke to her.