She had not written to Everard. Pen, ink, and paper had been brought. The sister had propped her up with pillows in a posture especially comfortable for writing. But her strength had failed her. To ask him for money was more than her pride could do. Instead, she had written a long outpouring to Joyce, which lay unposted under her pillow. This pride was a seam of flint in her soft nature. She would have returned to Everard as his wife, willingly, gratefully, glad to lay her tired head on his shoulder, and feel his strong protection around her once more. But from any one rather than him would she accept charity. Illogical, irrational, absurd--but a reality none the less in her heart. Perhaps it was a protest of wounded sex. If Everard had treated her differently on that disastrous day, the quivering feminine might have gone unscathed. But in his anger, pain and disillusion he had driven her wrongs towards him into her flesh, almost like infidelities. She was too generous to feel resentful. An offer of remarriage would be a natural acknowledgment of error. To accept his support, apart from him, stung her to the soul with a sense of being cast off as faithless wife or dishonest mistress, to whom, however, he was forgivingly and charitably disposed. And yet what was she to do? Joyce would save her from immediate want, but she could not look to him for anything but temporary assistance. More was preposterous. At last she gave up thinking. Joyce, with his cleverness, would see some way out of her difficulties. Somewhat comforted, she fell asleep. The next day was long and intensely dismal. The more clearly she saw that Joyce’s counsel was the only course to follow, the more hateful it seemed to her to write the letter. She put it off from hour to hour. And then the terrible blow that had befallen her weighed upon her mind. She strove to realise herself moving about the world without a voice. It was as hard to grasp as the conception of herself as a bodiless shade on the banks of Acheron. When the elusiveness ceased, and the reality loomed upon her in all its grimness, she wept bitterly. The consequence was that, in her still weak state, she broke down with the mental worry, and, when Joyce next came, he found her in a far worse state than before. She could scarcely move or speak. Letter-writing was out of the question. By the merest chance he learned, during the five minutes the sister allowed him to have with her, that she had not yet written to Everard. “But the mail goes to-morrow,” he said. “I have been making enquiries. If we don’t write now, we shall lose a month. Shall I write to Everard, seeing that your poor little self is incapable?”