The next morning Catherine, finding that Robert still slept on, after their usual waking time, and remembering his exhaustion of the night before, left him softly, and kept the house quiet that he might not be disturbed. She was in charge of the now toddling Mary in the dinning-room, when the door opened and Robert appeared. At sight of him she sprang up with a half-cry; the face seemed to have lost all its fresh color, its look of sure and air: the eyes were sunk; the lips and chin lined and drawn. It was like a face from which the youth had suddenly been struck out. ‘Robert!----’ but her question died on her lips. ‘A bad night, darling, and a bad headache,’ he said, groping his way, as it seemed to her, to the table, his hand leaning on her arm. ‘Give me some breakfast.’ She restrained herself at once, put him into an arm-chair by the window, and cared for him in her tender, noiseless way. But she had grown almost as pale as he, and her heart was like lead. ‘Will you send me off for the day to Thurston ponds?’ he said presently, trying to smile with lips so stiff and nerveless that the will had small control over them. ‘Can you walk so far? You did overdo it yesterday, you know. You have never got over Mile End, Robert.’ But her voice had a note in it which in his weakness he could hardly bear. He thirsted to be alone again, to be able to think over quietly what was best for her--for them both. There must be a next step, and in her neighborhood, he was too feeble, too tortured, to decide upon it. ‘No more, dear--no more,’ he said, impatiently, as she tried to feed him; then he added as he rose: ‘Don’t make arrangements for our going next week, Catherine; it can’t be so soon.’ Catherine looked at him with eyes of utter dismay. The sustaining hope of all these difficult weeks, which had slipped with such terrible unexpectedness into their happy life, was swept away from her. ‘Robert, you _ought_ to go.’ ‘I have too many things to arrange,’ he said, sharply, almost irritably. Then his tone changed. ‘Don’t urge it, Catherine.’ His eyes in their weariness seemed to entreat her not to argue. She stooped and kissed him, her lips trembling. ‘When do you want to go to Thurston?’ ‘As soon as possible. Can you find me my fishing basket and get me some sandwiches? I shall only lounge there and take it easy.’ She did everything for him that wifely hands could do. Then when his fishing basket was strapped on, and his lunch was slipped into the capacious pocket of the well-worn shooting coat, she threw her arms round him. ‘Robert, you will come away _soon_.’ He roused himself and kissed her. ‘I will,’ he said simply, withdrawing, however, from her grasp, as though he could not bear those close, pleading eyes. ‘Good-by! I shall be back some time in the afternoon.