"Would you?" Helen said. She had a practical as well as a superstitious distaste for offering thanks for benefits not actually received, and also a disbelief in the present certainty of her possession, but she took hope. John had gone, Rupert was going, of her own will she would send Zebedee away, and then surely the powers would be appeased, and if she suffered enough from loneliness, from dread of seeing Mildred Caniper ill again, of never getting her lover back, the rulers of her life might be willing, at the end, to let her have Zebedee and the shining house--the shining house which lately had taken firmer shape, and stood squarely back from the road, with a little copse of trees rising behind. CHAPTER XXI She cried out when next she saw him, for between this and their next meeting he had grown gaunter, more nervous, sharper in voice and gesture. "Oh, you're ill!" she said, and stepped back as though she did not know him. "Yes, I'm ill." He held to a chair and tipped it back and forth. "For goodness' sake, don't talk about it any more. I'm ill. That's settled. Now let's get on to something else." He saw her lip quiver and, uttering a desperate, "I'm sorry," he turned from her to the window. The wisdom she could use so well with others was of no avail with him: he was too much herself to be treated cunningly. She felt that she floated on a sea vastly bigger than she had ever known, and its waves were love and fear and cruelty and fate, but in a moment he turned and she saw a raft on which she might sail for ever. "Forgive me." "You've made me love you more." "With being a brute to you?" "Were you one? But--don't often be angry. I might get used to it!" He laughed. "Oh, Helen, you wonder! But I've spoilt our memories." "With such a little thing? And when I liked it?" "You nearly cried. I don't want to remember that." "But I shall like to because we're nearer than we were," she said, and to that he solemnly agreed. "And I am going to talk about it." "Anything, of course." "You look tired and hungry and sleepy, and I'm going to send you away." "My dear," he said with a grimace, "I've got to go." "Give me the credit of sending you." "I don't want it. Ah! you've no idea what leaving you is like." "But I know--" "That's not the same thing." "It's worse, I believe. Darling one, go away and come back to me, but don't come back until you're well. I want--I want to do without you now--and get it over." Her eyes, close to his, were bright with the vision of things he could not see. "Get it over," she said again, "and then, perhaps, we shall be safe." He had it in him at that moment to say he would not go because of his own fear for her, but he only took her on his knee and rocked her as though she were a baby on the point of sleep and he proved that, after all, he knew her very well, for when he spoke he said, "I don't think I can go." She started up. "Have you thought of something?" "Yes." "What is it?" "You."