And for the next three weeks--being, as she had said, a creature of extremes--she was so uniformly and enchantingly 'good to him' that those long days of fever, pain, and enforced idleness were among the most delectable Max Richardson had ever known, or ever wished to know; that, in truth, each landmark on the road back to health and duty could no longer be regarded with that unmixed satisfaction common to the masculine invalid. But Richardson was too little capable of analysis to be troubled by this wrong-headed state of things, or to detect the hidden seed from which his flower of contentment sprang. Mrs Lenox was astonishingly kind to him, and quite the most charming companion a sick man could desire: that was all. His sharp bout of fever once over, she sang to him, read to him, argued with him on a quaint variety of subjects, enlarging his mental horizon, drawing out thoughts and opinions at whose existence he had never guessed till now. But for him the hidden charm of their intercourse lay less in what she said or sang, than in the vibrations of her voice; in the quick response of lips and eyes to her April changes of mood; and more than all in her unfailing spirit of humour, which broke up the monotone of days spent in a long chair as a prism breaks white light into a band of brilliant colours. For Quita's genius was not of the highly specialised order. It did not inhabit an air-tight compartment of her brain where pictures grew. It pervaded her whole personality. It was not merely a genius for art, but for living, for being vital, for seeing and feeling and doing all that it is possible to see and feel and do in the sum of man's threescore years and ten. Small wonder then if Max Richardson enjoyed his convalescence, and was in no hurry to complete the process.