When Elise tried to make him talk (and even in her finest flights Elise never forgot him) he responded to her with unvarying gentleness, but he never started a subject, and neither illustration nor analysis escaped him. His silence made him look a little churlish, and Hermione added just the least edge to his churlishness by the careful manner in which she avoided rubbing it in. It was as if she silently conveyed to her companions, “Just see how careful I am not to show him up! I could, you know, by a turn of the wrist, make him look sulky, and even say something to me which would sound downright rude. But I sha’n’t. I let him off. He _is_ a bear with a sore head, but I won’t even let you know how thoroughly I understand that the sore head is levelled solely at me.” The evening passed like a draught of southern wine. At last Hermione rose slowly to her feet, holding on to the armchair with her white, emaciated hand. John’s eyes fell on it, and he realised with a shock of pity how thin Hermione was, and, as his eyes met hers, how suffering. She smiled an heroic, unflinching smile back at him. “Honey,” she said to Elise, “it’s time your little old sister ran away.” In an instant Elise was by her side; the two sisters left the room with their arms round each other’s waists. John held the door open for them to pass. He was about to accompany them to see if he could help Hermione, when Mr. Brett called him back. “Well?” said Mr. Brett. He lifted a grey face in which the humour seemed curiously overlaid by pain. “Well, John Sterling,” he said, “you’ve seen Hermione. What do you make of her?” John hesitated. Mr. Brett’s face was in shadow, he did not notice that Mr. Brett looked ill, because that was the way he usually looked. People were so accustomed to seeing Mr. Brett ill that they sometimes thought he must be accustomed to the sensation. “Surely,” John said at last a little uncomfortably, “she’s very fond of her sister?” “No she ain’t,” said Mr. Brett positively, “she’s only fond of one person on God’s earth, and that person is Hermione; and she’s just a little mite, not as much as I should like, afraid of me.” Elise re-entered, exultant with happiness. She did not notice her father, who was half concealed by a heavy curtain. She threw her arms around her lover’s neck. “Oh, John,” she cried breathlessly, “isn’t Hermione perfect? Isn’t she just too sweet? She says you’re the _only_ man in the world she could have trusted me with.” “God help you John,” said Mr. Brett under his breath. Neither of them heard him. He got up softly and crept out of the room. CHAPTER V John had been married six weeks. Four of them had been spent with an Angel in Paradise, and two of them at Mambles with Elise. John had had a hard and lonely young life. He had plodded seriously through an orphaned childhood and into the sharpest crisis in history.