not like a submissive wife--a slave," she said.

She stood for a moment looking down at her shoe-tip which she moved
slightly to and fro. Then she said abruptly:

"How is my boy? Does his paleness mean that he is not well really--or is
it only a passing thing?"

"No, no," he hastened to reassure her. "The boy feels the confinement of
the house, of course, but a week of sunny weather would have him right
as a trivet."

"And if it keeps on raining?"

"I hardly think it will. We are nearly in July now. Rainy Junes are
frequent in England, you know; but July is apt to show some fine
weather."

"But in case it does not?" she persisted.

"Then I think a little outing to the Isle of Wight or the south of
France might be the thing."

She pondered this.

"I see," she said at last. "And will you promise to tell me, the moment
that you think Bobby needs such a change?"

"I do, indeed," he replied earnestly.

"Thank you. Now I feel free to give all my attention to my husband--for
the present. I shall go to him myself now. It seems to me the last hope
that we have."

"You mean that you will try to persuade him to--to--er--be frank with
you?"

"Yes."

Bellamy looked at her in genuine distress.

"I'm afraid you must prepare yourself for disappointment, Mrs. Chesney."

"I am prepared for it," she said. Her voice was grave, but under the
gravity there was depth on depth of bitterness.

"Well--God be with you!" said Bellamy, with much feeling.

"Thank you," she said gently.

She passed out of his sight, going upstairs towards her husband's room.

XXVI

To do Chesney justice, he had not taken that first dose of the extra
morphia in his possession with any calm determination of deceit. The
craving for it, the constant temptation so close at hand, had led him
into that subtle, false reasoning so common to all people in like case.
He had deceived himself as well as others. It happened in this way:
Sophy, burning with all the over-ardour of a novice, with all the
exaggerated zeal of the amateur nurse, put on her mettle, as it were, by
the warnings and conjurations of Anne Harding, acted with the precision
of clockwork. Showed, in fact, to its nth power the very quality which
Anne prided herself on lacking--the precision of a "doctor-run machine."
It could not have been otherwise. She had neither the knowledge nor the
experience which allowed Anne to vary the regularity of the hours of
assuagement, those ho