“Eliot will be down soon, I expect,” said North. He was wandering aimlessly, restlessly, about the room, for as the time lengthened his nerves too grew strained with waiting. What had happened? All sorts of horrible possibilities pressed themselves upon him. If only Ruth would come and he could see her alone for a moment! He stopped in his restless pacing, and looked down kindly at his wife’s shivering form. “Shall I shut the windows?” he asked. “No,” she answered; “never mind. Oh, Roger, do you think she will die? I can’t bear it! Oh, why doesn’t he come?” She got up and clutched her husband’s coat-sleeve, hiding her face on his shoulder. “Roger, I couldn’t bear her to die.” Never before had the great presence of Death really come near to her, except to summon the very old whose life had already almost passed to the other side. And now, suddenly, like a bolt out of a serene blue sky, it was standing beside her, imminent, threatening, and, to her, unspeakably terrible. Roger North put an awkward arm round her. He felt uncomfortably stiff and useless, and ridiculously conscious of the fact that she had forgotten in her hurry and distress to take her hair out of the curler at the back of her neck. He was honestly anxious to be sympathetic, to be all that was kind and helpful. His own anxiety racked him, and yet, absurdly enough, that curler obtruded itself on his notice until he found himself saying, “You have left one of your curlers in.” He was acutely aware that it was about the last thing he should have said and wholly unsuitable to the moment, but his wife, fortunately, took no such view. “It just shows the state of my mind!” she exclaimed, trying with shaking fingers to disentangle it. “I have never done such a thing in my life before! What a mercy you noticed it!” He helped her to get the little instrument out, and put it in his pocket. There was the sound of a closing door above, the hurried movement of feet, and Mrs. North clutched her husband’s arm. They both looked towards the door. But silence fell again, and she began to cry. “Do you think she’s dying, Roger?” “No, no! Eliot would send for us, of course.” He began his restless walk to and fro again. “I wish we had got here before Eliot did. You could have gone in with him then.” And here, at last, footsteps came down the stairs, across the hall, the door opened, and the doctor came in. He was an unusual man to find buried in a country practice. A man of outstanding intellect and of a very charming presence. Between him and North a warm friendship existed. “Ah, you have come!” he exclaimed. He took Mrs. North’s hand and looked down at her with exceeding kindness. “The child is very ill and I fear brain trouble,” he said. “I gather she went for a long walk yesterday and got drenched in the storm, so it is possibly aggravated by a chill. Do you know of any special worry or trouble?”