chairs, he would not notice the
lack of a meal--anyone can sit under trees by the sea wall and eat
bread and jam sandwiches, and forget they are doing it because they have
to. Louis objected. To him food eaten out of doors was reminiscent of
people from the slums having tea on Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath or
Greenwich Park. To Marcella it recalled days on Ben Grief with Wullie.
But they stayed indoors with blinds drawn to keep out the stifling airs
of the street, and sheets dipped in carbolic solution hung over doors
and windows to keep away the half dozen unidentified insect pests that
worried them.

She wrote long letters home during the morning. Louis smoked and
fidgetted and read the Sunday papers. She found it hard to write letters
when he was walking about, sometimes watching the point of her pen,
lifting a cup and putting it down again, reading a few paragraphs of the
paper and dropping it listlessly, opening the cupboard door motivelessly
and closing it again, lifting down books, peering behind them and
letting them slip from his hands to the floor with a bang.

She glanced up once or twice impatiently. Once, looking at her
apologetically he said:

"I keep worrying about those bally cigarettes, old thing." She saw that
his finger-nails, which three weeks' sanity had mended, were bitten and
gnawed to bleeding again. "I c-can't h-help it, girlie."

She felt raked up and nervous, too. Since they had been married she had
found such delight in preparing Louis's meals that she was miserable in
not doing it to-day. She felt that she was to blame, that she had been
remiss somewhere, though she could not see where. But she answered him
crossly and impatiently, and he began to fidget about the room again.

"I've been reading 'Parsifal' again and again, doctor," she wrote. "Do
read it, and tell me what you think of my theory. I see humanity as
Amfortas, the wounded king, who, if he hadn't let himself so wantonly
get wounded, would still have been the keeper of God's Presence on
earth. I see the Spear as humanity's weakness, which, by being turned to
strength, becomes a spear of Deliverance. Ingenious, isn't it? You'll
say 'More dreams, Marcella?' But they're not dreams, doctor, any more.
I'm a man of action now, and I like it."

"I say, old girl," broke in Louis's voice. "It's nearly one o'clock and
I've only three left. I've smoked them faster than usual simply because
I've been worrying so. What the devil am I t