On Monday morning she was ill, and Robin ordered her to stay in bed. Monday was Harriett’s last night. Priscilla stayed in bed till six o’clock, when she heard Robin come in; then she insisted on being dressed and carried downstairs. Harriett heard her calling to Robin, and Robin saying, “I _told_ you you weren’t to get up till to-morrow,” and a sound like Prissie crying. At dinner she shook and jerked and spilt things worse than ever. Robin gloomed at her. “You know you ought to be in bed. You’ll go at nine.” “If I go, you’ll go. You’ve got a headache.” “I should think I had, sitting in this furnace.” The heat of the dining room oppressed him, but they sat on there after dinner because Prissie loved the heat. Robin’s pale, blank face had a sick look, a deadly smoothness. He had to lie down on the sofa in the window. When the clock struck nine he sighed and got up, dragging himself as if the weight of his body was more than he could bear. He stooped over Prissie, and lifted her. “Robin--you can’t. You’re dropping to pieces.” “I’m all right.” He heaved her up with one tremendous, irritated effort, and carried her upstairs, fast, as if he wanted to be done with it. Through the open doors Harriett could hear Prissie’s pleading whine, and Robin’s voice, hard and controlled. Presently he came back to her and they went into his study. They could breathe there, he said. They sat without speaking for a little time. The silence of Prissie’s room overhead came between them. Robin spoke first. “I’m afraid it hasn’t been very gay for you with poor Prissie in this state.” “Poor Prissie? She’s very happy, Robin.” He stared at her. His eyes, round and full and steady, taxed her with falsehood, with hypocrisy. “You don’t suppose _I’m_ not, do you?” “No.” There was a movement in her throat as though she swallowed something hard. “No. I want you to be happy.” “You don’t. You want me to be rather miserable.” “_Robin!_” She contrived a sound like laughter. But Robin didn’t laugh; his eyes, morose and cynical, held her there. “That’s what you want.... At least I hope you do. If you didn’t----” She fenced off the danger. “Do _you_ want _me_ to be miserable, then?” At that he laughed out. “No. I don’t. I don’t care how happy you are.” She took the pain of it: the pain he meant to give her. That evening he hung over Priscilla with a deliberate, exaggerated tenderness. “Dear.... Dearest....” He spoke the words to Priscilla, but he sent out his voice to Harriett. She could feel its false precision, its intention, its repulse of her. She was glad to be gone. VII Eighteen seventy-nine: it was the year her father lost his money. Harriett was nearly thirty-five. She remembered the day, late in November, when they heard him coming home from the office early. Her mother raised her head and said, “That’s your father, Harriett. He must be ill.” She always thought of seventy-nine as one continuous November.