When he said _best_ did he mean _most suitable? Suitable_ was not perhaps exactly the word for Forsyth. It was something other than a question of mere suitability. It was a keeping out of the _bad_, as well as a bringing in of the _good_. _Suitable_ was not the word that he wanted. What did he want? The words began to jump about on the paper, and suddenly out of the centre of his table there stretched and extended the figure of Miss Milton. Yes, there she was in her shabby clothes and hat, smirking.... He dashed his hand at her and she vanished. He sprang up. This was too bad. He must not let these fancies get hold of him. He went into the hall. He called out loudly, his voice echoing through the house, "Joan! Joan!" Almost at once she came. Strange the relief that he felt! But he wouldn't show it. She must notice nothing at all out of the ordinary. She sat close to him at their evening meal and talked to him about everything that came into her young head. Sometimes he wished that she wouldn't talk so much; she hadn't talked so much in earlier days, had she? But he couldn't remember what she had done in earlier days. He was very particular now about his food. Always he had eaten whatever was put in front of him with hearty and eager appreciation; now he seemed to have very little appetite. He was always complaining about the cooking. The potatoes were hard, the beef was underdone, the pastry was heavy. And sometimes he would forget altogether that he was eating, and would sit staring in front of him, his food neglected on his plate. It was not easy for Joan. Not easy to choose topics that were not dangerous. And so often he was not listening to her at all. Perhaps at no other time did she pity him so much, and love him so much, as when she saw him staring in front of him, his eyes puzzled, bewildered, piteous, like those of an animal caught in a trap. All her old fear of him was gone, but a new fear had come in its place. Sometimes, in quite the old way, he would rap out suddenly, "Nonsense--stuff and nonsense!...As though _he_ knew anything about it!" or would once again take the whole place, town and Cathedral and all of them, into his charge with something like, "I knew how to manage the thing. What they would have done without-- " But these defiances never lasted. They would fade away into bewilderment and silence. He would complain continually of his head, putting his hand suddenly up to it, and saying, like a little child: "My head's so bad. Such a headache!" But he would refuse to see Puddifoot; had seen him once, and had immediately quarrelled with him, and told him that he was a silly old fool and knew nothing about anything, and this when Puddifoot had come with the noblest motives, intending to patronise and condole.