Bessie, increasingly perceptive, began to suspect that what she saw was the brightness after the storm. She wondered what his long solitary hours were like when she was away. What must they be, with him helpless, disappointed, lonely, liable to maddening attacks of nerves? But he assured her that he was perfectly comfortable; Mammy Dinah was faithful and competent; and he was really making headway with the German and French that he had taken up because he could put them down as need was, and because--they might come in, in some way, some time. “In heaven?” Bessie wondered secretly, but, enlightened by her own experience, saw the advantage of his being entertained. “You're too much alone,” she said, feeling for the trouble. “And so am I,” she added, thoughtfully. She should have noticed his eyes at that last. He had developed a sort of controlled voracity for endearment, but he never asked for it. In the old days he had taken his own masterfully, with no doubts. Now he waited. He did not starve. She cajoled him and coaxed his appetite and patted the pillows, and made pretty, laughing eyes at him and fate quite in her habitual manner. Her touch and tone of affection had never been so free. But in that very fact he found another sting. “The better I do on the road, the more they keep me out,” she was saying. “We can't go on this way. I've been thinking lately--Could you bear to go North, Guy, and to live in a city, among strangers? Perhaps at headquarters there might be an opening for me that would let me settle down.” “What! Cincinnati! Is there any such chance?” “You'd _like_ it? Why on earth--Are you so bored here?” “Oh, Bibi, have you never thought of it? In a city there'd be some chance of something I could do!” “You? Oh, Guy!” After she had accepted the care of him, and that so pleasantly, he wasn't satisfied! “Is there anything you lack here?” She was hurt. It was replaying the old parts reversed. Once _he_ had grieved that he could not give her enough to content her. “A--h--” He turned his head away and flung an arm up over his eyes. She understood only that he was suffering. “But, Guy, there's nothing you could do, possibly. It's not to be expected. Have I complained?” She fell back on the kindly imbecility of the nurse. “Now you're not to worry about that, at least until you're better--” “Better?” He forgot the lines in which he had schooled himself. The man overrode the amateur actor. “That's not the thing to hope for. Why couldn't it have killed me--that first fall?” (“My dear, my dear!” she stammered.) “There would have been some satisfaction in getting out of the way, and that in decent fashion; like a charge of powder, not like a rubbish-heap. I can't accept it of you, Bibi. I'm enraged for you. I can't be grateful. I'm ashamed.” She understood now.