I tried to learn that on the following day, but found access to her difficult. Since she was hostess to the speaker of the afternoon as well as to some sixty or eighty guests, mostly ladies, this was scarcely strange. I was limited, therefore, to the two or three seconds during which I was placing in her hands a cup of tea. Even then there was a subject as to which I more pressingly desired information. “I see Stephen isn’t here.” She couldn’t keep out of her eyes what I read as a kind of crossfire, expressive of contradictory emotions. “He wouldn’t come.” “Why not?” “He didn’t like the subject.” “Because it was medicine?” “Because it was war.” “But if this country goes in?” “He doesn’t believe it will. He thinks the breaking off of our relations with Germany will do all for which we can be called on. We’ll never fight, he says. Even if we declare war he’s sure it will only be in name.” I was not so much interested in Cantyre’s opinions as in the way in which she would take them. “And you?” “Oh, I think he’s only kicking against the pricks. He can’t think like that.” I gave her a look which I tried to make significant. “You mean that he’s taking the indirect method?” She gazed off to the other side of the room. “Oh, that isn’t the indirect method.” “What does the indirect method involve?” But here Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott butted in—I have no other term for it—with a question, which she asked as if her life depended on the answer, “Regina, didn’t you think the action of that English nurse in going over the mountains with the band of little Serbian boys the most heroic thing you ever heard of?” So I came away without having learned what it was I was doing, but not less determined to find out. I resolved to try Cantyre. My meetings with him had become not exactly rare, but certainly infrequent. I had hardly noticed the decline of our intimacy while it was going on; I only came to a sudden realization of it when I said to myself I would look in on him that night. It occurred to me in the first place that I had not looked in on him of my own accord since I had come home. I had gone round the elbow of the corridor once or twice when he had invited me, but never of my own initiative. Then it struck me that it was some time since he himself had come knocking at my door. “Lovey, when was the doctor last in here?” He was in the “kitchingette” and came to the threshold slowly. When he did so there was that scared look on his face I had seen on the previous afternoon. “I don’t rightly know, Slim.” “Isn’t it more than a week ago?” He considered. “It might be.” “Do you know any reason why he doesn’t come?” He seemed to be defending himself against an accusation. “Why, Slim! ’Ow sh’d I know?” “Well, you see him every day—in and out of his room with his boots and things.” “He don’t ’ardly ever speak to me.” “And don’t you ever speak to him?”