d back over
the preceding weeks, the physical weakness and disturbance which had
marked them, and which he had struggled through, paying as little heed
as possible, took shape, spectre-like, in his mind.

And at the same moment a passionate rebellion against weakness and
disablement arose in him. He sat up dizzily, his head in his hands.

'Rest--strength,' he said to himself, with strong inner resolve, 'for
the work's sake!'

He dragged himself up to bed and said nothing to Catherine till the
morning. Then, with boyish brightness, he asked her to take him and the
babe off without delay to the Norman coast, vowing that he would lounge
and idle for six whole weeks if she would let him. Shocked by his looks,
she gradually got from him the story of the night before. As he told it,
his swoon was a mere untoward incident and hindrance in a spiritual
drama, the thrill of which, while he described it, passed even to her.
The contrast, however, between the strong hopes she felt pulsing through
him, and his air of fragility and exhaustion, seemed to melt the heart
within her, and make her whole being, she hardly knew why, one sensitive
dread. She sat beside him, her head laid against his shoulder, oppressed
by a strange and desolate sense of her comparatively small share in this
ardent life. In spite of his tenderness and devotion, she felt often as
though he were no longer hers--as though a craving hungry world, whose
needs were all dark and unintelligible to her, were asking him from her,
claiming to use as roughly and prodigally as it pleased the quick mind
and delicate frame.

As to the schemes developing round him, she could not take them in
whether for protest or sympathy. She could think only of where to go,
what doctor to consult, how she could persuade him to stay away long
enough.

There was little surprise in Elgood Street when Elsmere announced that
he must go off for a while. He so announced it that everybody who heard
him understood that his temporary withdrawal was to be the mere
preparation for a great effort--the vigil before the tourney; and the
eager friendliness with which he was met sent him off in good heart.

* * * * *

Three or four days later he, Catherine and Mary were at Petites Dalles,
a little place on the Norman coast, near Fecamp, with which he had first
made acquaintance years before, when he was at Oxford.

Here all that in London had been oppressive in the