Yet how could she get well when the stubborn weakness and languor persisted, when her nights were so long and sleepless, her appetite so slight, her strength so quickly exhausted? "When do you think I will get well, Miss Snow?" she would ask. "Come, now, we're not going to bother our heads about THAT," Miss Snow would say cheerfully. "Why, you're not sick! You've just got to rest and take care of yourself, that's all! Dear ME, if you were suffering every minute of the time, you might have something to grumble about!" Doctor Valentine was equally unsatisfactory, although Rachael loved the simple, homely man so much that she could not be vexed by his kindly vagueness: "These things are slow to fight, Rachael," said George Valentine. "Alice had just such a fight years ago. When the human machinery runs down, there's nothing for it but patience! You did too much last winter, nursing the baby until you left for California, and then only the hot summer between that and September! Just go slow!" Perhaps once a month Magsie came in to see Rachael, ready to pour tea, to flirt with any casual caller, or to tickle the roaring baby with the little fox head on her muff. She had been playing in a minor part in a successful production. Among all the callers who came and went perhaps Magsie was the most at home in the Gregory house--a harmless little affectionate creature, unimportant, but always welcome. Slowly health and strength came back, and one by one Rachael took up the dropped threads of her life. The early spring found her apparently herself again, but there was a touch of gray here and there in her dark hair, and Elinor and Judy told each other that her spirits were not the same. They did not know what Rachael knew, that there was a change in Warren, so puzzling, so disquieting, that his wife's convalescence was delayed by many a wakeful hour and many a burst of secret tears on his account. She could not even analyze it, much less was she fit to battle with it with her old splendid strength and sanity. His general attitude toward her, in these days, was one of paternal and brisk kindliness. He liked her new gown, he didn't care much for that hat, she didn't look awfully well, better telephone old George, it wouldn't do to have her sick again! Yes, he was going out, unless she wanted him for something? She was reminded hideously of her old days with Clarence. Shaken and weak still, she fought gallantly against the pain and bewilderment of the new problem. She invited the persons he liked to the house, she effaced her own claim, she tried to get him to talk of his cases. Sometimes, as the spring ripened, she planned whole days with him in the car. They would go up to Ossining and see the Perrys, or they would go to Jersey and spend the day with Doctor Cheseborough. Perhaps Warren accepted these suggestions, and they had a cloudless day. Or when Sunday morning came, and the boys, coated and capped, were eager to start, he might evade them.