e, I
haven't been here since May 4, and to-day is July 2. I think I must
have overslept myself. And that idiot Jarvis was opening the letters
when I arrived! Yes, I'm quite ready."

They helped him out to the carriage. He stepped in and took his
usual place without speaking again. The car drove off, Fenella
holding his hand, the doctor sitting opposite.

CHAPTER XXXVI

COUNTERCLAIMS

There was nothing about their attitude or appearance which indicated
the change. Their chairs were so close together that they almost
touched. Her white, ringless hand lay in his. Through the wide-open
window of their tiny sitting-room they looked down upon the river as
they had sat and watched it so many evenings before. Yet the change
was unmistakable. Arnold no longer guessed at it--he felt it. The
old days of their pleasant comradeship had gone. There were reserves
in everything she said. Sometimes she shrank from him almost as
though he were a stranger. The eyes that grew bright and still
danced with pleasure at his coming, were almost, a moment later,
filled with apprehension as she watched him.

"Tell me again," he begged, "what the doctor really said! It sounds
too good to be true."

"So I thought," she agreed, "but I haven't exaggerated a thing. He
assured me that there was no risk, no pain, and that the cure was
certain. I am to go to the hospital in three weeks' time."

"You don't mind it?"

"Why should I?" she answered. "The last time," she continued, "it
was in France. I remember the white stone corridors, the white room,
and the surgeons all dressed in white. Do you know, they say that I
shall be out again in a fortnight."

He nodded.

"I can see you already," he declared, "with a gold-headed stick and
a fascinating limp like Marguerite de Vallieres."

She smiled very faintly but said nothing. Somehow, it was hard to
make conversation. Ruth was unusually pale, even for her. The eyes
which followed that line of yellow lights were full of trouble.

"Tell me," he begged presently, "you have something on your mind, I
am sure. There is nothing you are keeping from me?"

"Have I not enough," she asked, "to make me anxious?"

"Naturally," he admitted, "and yet, after all, you have only seen
your father once in your life."

"But I am sure that I could have loved him so much," she murmured.
"He seems to have come and gone in a dream."

"This morning's report was more hopeful," he reminded her. "There is
e