As he returned toward the house presently, he thought of Norah's unwonted pallor. Poor child, the heat seemed to be trying her more than anybody. And he thought of how wan and limp and sad she looked early this morning, when he had again sent her out of his office and flatly refused to let her do any more writing or tidying for him. Even her red lips had gone pale; she dropped her head; her white eyelids and black lashes fluttered as she looked up at him piteously, seeming to ask: "What have I done that you treat me like this, oh, my cruel master?" He had driven his hands deep into his pockets, had shrugged his shoulders, and spoken almost roughly--telling her to go about her business, and not bother. He thought if he gave her time to do it, she might cry again; and he did not want to see any more of her tears. But off and on throughout the day he had watched her when she did not in the least know that she was being observed. Just after breakfast he had watched her as she scrubbed the kitchen floor, and had noticed the pretty lines of her figure in these sprawling attitudes--her ankles, stockings, and the upturned soles of her buckle-shoes. He was watching her when she came up from the dairy with the pail that held Mavis' afternoon supply of milk, and he noticed her stretched arm, bare to the elbow, and the other arm balancing, the tilted body helping also to maintain equilibrium. Almost more than she could manage--why didn't that broad-backed thick-legged lump of a dairy-maid carry the house-pail? He would have liked to go out and carry the pail himself; but that was one of the many things which he must carefully refrain from doing. And all day long, though he saw her so often, he never once heard her sing. She made no song over her work, as used to be her habit. He wondered if Mavis was not working her too hard in this terribly exhausting weather. He wondered also if he would ever be able to say quite naturally what he had for so long wished to say and felt he ought to say--that Norah must be given a holiday, that she must be sent somewhere at a considerable distance and stay there in charge of kind and respectable people for an indefinite period. Mavis might consider the suggestion so strange; and it might be impossible to explain that, strange as it seemed, it was nevertheless full of wisdom--a suggestion that should be acted upon without an instant's delay.