Falloden helped him carry up his plaid, his books and papers. In Otto’s room, the windows were wide open, but there was a bright fire, and Bateson the scout was waiting to help him undress. Falloden asked some questions about the doctor’s orders. Various things were wanted from Oxford. He undertook to get them in the morning. When he came back to the sitting-room, he stood some time in a brown study. He wondered again whether he had any qualifications at all as a nurse. But he was inclined to think now that Radowitz might be worse off without him; what Constance had said seemed less unreal; and his effort of the evening, as he looked back on it, brought him a certain bitter satisfaction. * * * * * The following day, Radowitz came downstairs with the course of the second movement of his symphony clear before him. He worked feverishly all day, now writing, now walking up and down, humming and thinking, now getting out of his piano--a beautiful Erard hired for the winter--all that his maimed state allowed him to get; and passing hour after hour, between an ecstasy of happy creation, and a state of impotent rage with his own helplessness. Towards sunset he was worn out, and with tea beside him which he had been greedily drinking, he was sitting huddled over the fire, when he heard someone ride up to the front door. In another minute the sitting-room door opened, and a girl’s figure in a riding habit appeared. ‘May I come in?’ said Connie, flushing rather pink. Otto sprang up, and drew her in. His fatigue disappeared as though by magic. He seemed all gaiety and force. ‘Come in! Sit down and have some tea! I was so depressed five minutes ago--I was fit to kill myself. And now you make the room shine--you come in like a goddess!’ He busied himself excitedly in putting a chair for her, in relighting the spirit kettle, in blowing up the fire. Constance meanwhile stood in some embarrassment with one hand on the back of a chair--a charming vision in her close fitting habit, and the same black _tricorne_ that she had worn in the Lathom Woods, at Falloden’s side. ‘I came to bring you a book, dear Mr. Otto, the book we talked of yesterday.’ She held out a paper-covered volume. ‘But I mustn’t stay.’ ‘Oh, do stay!’ he implored her. ‘Don’t bother about Mrs. Grundy. I’m so tired and so bored. Anybody may visit an invalid. Think this is a nursing home, and you’re my daily visitor. Falloden’s miles away on a drag-hunt. Ah, that’s right!’ He waved his hand as he saw that she had seated herself. ‘Now you shall have some tea!’ She let him provide her, watching him the while with slightly frowning brows. How ill he looked--how ill! Her heart sank. ‘Dear Mr. Otto, how are you? You don’t seem so well to-day.’ ‘I have been working myself to death. It won’t come right--this beastly _Andante_. It’s too jerky--it wants _liaison_. And I can’t hear it--I can’t _hear_ it!--that’s the devilish part of it.’