"I know. I will try to do what I think you would wish. I realise that I have caused trouble and--and expense, already. It is generous of you to let me go like this. Please tell me, how long may I stay?" "Virginia!" he said, and dropped his forehead on his hands. She looked at him in dim surprise, but with a mind too full of her own trouble to conceive of his. "How long?" she persisted gently. "A week?" "How can I decide how long?" he asked, lifting his haggard face again. "It depends upon the child. I must leave it to you. Stay as long as she needs you. I can say no more than that." "Oh!" she murmured, "you are so good!" He made no sound, but his lips set themselves in a line of pain. Ah, if only his brutality, his savage treatment of her did not lie between them! If it had been simply that she had come to him without love, yet longing for tenderness and protection! This would have been the moment to take her in his arms, to enfold her with sympathy and devotion that asked as yet no recompense. She leaned back in her corner, while the car rushed easily through the country, and the yellow harvest moon came up to show him more clearly the glimmering pearly oval that was her face. She was pondering over his directions, and every now and then put some little question which showed how practical was her mind, how bent upon the enterprise which lay before her. At last, after a prolonged silence, she spoke unexpected words. "I believe that being so miserable makes me understand a little bit better; understand you, I mean. When I think of my Pansy, I could find it in my heart to kill that wicked woman, her nurse, who let her be hurt when she was a little helpless child. I could almost torture this doctor, who has made her worse when he claimed to make her better; and I seem to see how it has happened--how being miserable for so many years has made you want to hurt somebody.... But the dreadful thought is, that it would do no good--no good at all! If I could kill the wicked nurse and the unskilful doctor it would not make my darling one bit better! And to make me unhappy won't help you, either, even though you think it will! I can't give you back the unhappy years, the lost years! It is all no good--no good!" "Virginia--don't!" So much was forced out of him in his pain. He could have told her that in one respect she was wrong--that it _was_ in her power to restore to him the years that the locust had eaten--that he was at her feet, conquered, submissive. But he saw how small a fragment of her mind was really occupied with him. She was eagerly looking forward--searching the horizon for the first glimpse of the chimneys of Derby. He mattered very little to her now. * * * * * They reached the station with six minutes in hand. Gaunt had sent a man down to Monton to telegraph for a sleeping-carriage, and they found all awaiting them.