"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of his." So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the attention of Miss Forrest. And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister concealed her trembling and her tears. CHAPTER XVII Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine. The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink deeper into her couch. Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love her--but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by loving her." She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside, or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in hers, as if she would have given them her own strength. And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than ever to her husband.