‘I say, I say,’ began Lawford; but it was too late, the door was shut. ‘How I detest this wretched falsehood and subterfuge. What could have induced you....?’ ‘Yes,’ said her husband, ‘what! I think I’ll be getting to bed again, Sheila; I forgot I had been ill. And now I do really feel very tired. But I should like to feel—in spite of this hideous—I should like to feel we are friends, Sheila.’ Sheila almost imperceptibly shuddered, crossed the room, and faced the still, almost lifeless mask. ‘I spoke,’ she said, in a low, cold, difficult voice—‘I spoke in a temper this morning. You must try to understand what a shock it has been to me. Now, I own it frankly, I know you are—Arthur. But God only knows how it frightens me, and—and—horrifies me.’ She shut her eyes beneath her veil. They waited on in silence a while. ‘Poor boy!’ she said at last, lightly touching the loose sleeve; ‘be brave; it will all come right, soon. Meanwhile, for Alice’s sake, if not for mine, don’t give way to—to caprices, and all that. Keep quietly here, Arthur. And—and forgive my impatience.’ He put out his hand as if to touch her. ‘Forgive you!’ he said humbly, pushing it stubbornly back into his pocket again. ‘Oh, Sheila, the forgiveness is all on your side. You know _I_ have nothing to forgive.’ A long silence fell between them. ‘Then, to-night,’ at last began Sheila wearily, drawing back, ‘we say nothing to Alice, except that you are too tired—just nervous prostration—to see her. What we should do without this influenza, I cannot conceive. Mr Bethany will probably look in on his way home; and then we can talk it over—we can talk it over again. So long as you are like this, yourself, in mind, why I—What is it now?’ she broke off querulously. ‘If you please, ma’am, Mr Critchett says he doesn’t know Dr Ferguson, his name’s not in the Directory, and there must be something wrong with the message, and he’s sorry, but he must have it in writing because there was more even in the first packet than he ought by rights to send. What shall I do, if you please?’ Still looking at her husband. Sheila listened quietly to the end, and then, as if in inarticulate disdain, she deliberately shrugged her shoulders, and went out to play her part unaided. CHAPTER SEVEN Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought him as much of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him an impostor, or something worse, the night before. That was at least something gained. He realised, too, in a vague way that the exuberance of mind that had practically invented Dr Ferguson, and outraged Miss Sinnet, had quite suddenly flickered out. It was astonishing, he thought, with gaze fixed innocently on the black coals, that he should ever have done such things. He detested that kind of ‘rot’; that jaunty theatrical pose so many men prided their jackdaw brains on.