She dozed and her headache lifted. When she woke her body was weak as if it had had a fever, but her mind closed on reality with the impact of a force delayed. There was a thing not yet quite real to her, a thing that seemed to belong to the region of bodily pain, to be born there as a bad dream might be born; a thing that had been there last night among other things, that, as she stared at it, became more prominent, more poignant than they. And yet, though its air was so beckoning and so familiar, it was not among the number of things accomplished and irrevocable. It was simply the thing she had to do. It possessed her now; and under its dominion she was uplifted, carried along. Her mind moved toward it with a reckless rocking speed, the perilous certainty of the insane. At five o'clock she rang the bell and asked the servant to bring her some tea. She swallowed a little with a jerk of her throat, and put the cup down, shuddering. It brought her a sickening memory of yesterday. At five o'clock she got up and dressed herself and sent a message to Robert Lucy to see her downstairs in her sitting-room, alone. As she stood at her glass she said to herself, "How shocking I look. But he won't mind." At six he was with her. She drew her hand away from his as if his touch had hurt her. Her smile was the still, bloodless smile that comes with pain. She drew her chair back out of the sunlight, in the recess by the fireplace. He stood beside her then, looking at her with eyes that loved her the more for the sad hurt to her beauty. His manner recalled the shy, adolescent uncertainty of his first approaches. "Don't you think," he said, "you ought to have stayed in bed?" She shook her head and struggled to find her voice. It came convulsively. "No. I'm better. I'm all right now." "It was being out in that beastly hot sun yesterday--with those youngsters. You're not used to it." She laughed. "No. I'm not used to it. Robert--you haven't told them, have you?" "What?" "About you--and me?" "No. Not yet." He smiled. "I say, I shall have to tell them very soon, shan't I?" "You needn't." He made some inarticulate sound that questioned her. "I've changed my mind. I can't marry you." He had to bend his head to catch her low, indistinct murmur; but he caught it. He drew back from her, and leaned against the chimneypiece and looked at her more intently than before. "Do you mean," he said quietly, "because of _them_?" "Yes." He looked down. "Poor Kitty," he said. "You think I'm asking too much of you?" She did not answer. "You're afraid?" "I told you I was afraid." "Yes. But I thought it was all right. I thought you liked them." She was silent. Tears rose to her eyes and hung on their unsteady lashes. "They like you." She bowed her head and the tears fell. "Is that what has upset you?" "Yes."