spoke of in
Mrs Olliver's face."

"Ah . . . so do I; of a rare quality."

"Well then, dear stupid, allow me to find it in yours also!"

"One to you," he admitted, smiling. "But now . . . I am in your hands
till tiffin. What are you going to do with me? Read? Sing? The
drawing-room's empty; and I haven't heard you since Kajiar."

"Do you want the Swinburne again?"

"No; by no means."

"Why not? Don't you like the song?"

"I like it far too well; and I'm not strong enough yet to stand a
brutal assault upon my feelings! Come along, and give me something
wholesome and simple. A convalescent needs milk diet mentally as well
as physically, you know!"

This was on one of his best days. But there were others,--following
upon nights of sleeplessness, and pain, and heart-searching
unspeakable, only to be alleviated by the one unfailing remedy,--when
the strain of repression demanded by her constant presence so wrought
upon his nerves that he would get up and leave her abruptly without
excuse; or shut himself into his room on the empty pretext of revising
manuscript. As a matter of fact, he spent most of the time girding at
the deliberate waste of good hours; till the consciousness of slipping
deeper into the mire and the dread of ultimate defeat became almost an
obsession, aggravated by ill-health and want of rest.

Quita, who remembered well his inexhaustible capacity for keeping
still, was distressed and puzzled by these moods of restlessness
verging on irritability, whose true significance she could not guess
at; though she was woman enough to know that a position merely
unsatisfactory for her, must be an actual strain on him. And as his
strength returned, she could only hope from day to day for some
allusion to the possibility of moving into their own bungalow; since it
was clear that they could not remain with the Desmonds for ever! Pride
and delicacy alike withheld her from the lightest mention of the
subject. It seemed to her that she had transgressed sufficiently in
both respects already. Yet, as the days accumulated to a week, and
still he said no word, she grew definitely anxious to know what was
going to happen next.

But, with all its drawbacks and difficulties, this week of intimate
everyday companionship had been one of the best weeks in her life. It
had served, above all things, to establish her conviction that the
husband she had chosen, by a lightning instinct of the brain rather
than