nside an hour a reply came not from Tilbury but from Portsmouth saying:

"Call Doctor ---- of Brook Street. Am coming up at once."

All this I heard for the first time when Price, with another triumphant
look, came into my bedroom flourishing Martin's telegram as something
she had reason to be proud of.

"You don't mean to say that you telegraphed to Mr. Conrad?" I said.

"Why _not?_" said Price. "When a lady is ill and her husband pays no
attention to her, and there's somebody else not far off who would give
his two eyes to save her a pain in her little finger, what is a woman to
do?"

I told her what she was _not_ to do. She was not to call the doctor
under any circumstances, and when Martin came she was to make it plain
to him that she had acted on her own responsibility.

Towards midnight he arrived, and Price brought him into my room in a
long ulster covered with dust. I blushed and trembled at sight of him,
for his face betrayed the strain and anxiety he had gone through on my
account, and when he smiled at seeing that I was not as ill as he had
thought, I was ashamed to the bottom of my heart.

"You'll be sorry you've made such a long journey now that you see
there's so little amiss with me," I said.

"Sorry?" he said. "By the holy saints, I would take a longer one every
night of my life to see you looking so well at the end of it."

His blue eyes were shining like the sun from behind a cloud, and the
cruellest looks could not have hurt me more.

I tried to keep my face from expressing the emotion I desired to
conceal, and asked if he had caught a train easily from Portsmouth,
seeing he had arrived so early.

"No. Oh no, there was no train up until eleven o'clock," he said.

"Then how did you get here so soon?" I asked, and though he would not
tell me at first I got it out of him at last--he had hired a motor-car
and travelled the ninety miles to London in two hours and a half.

That crushed me. I could not speak. I thought I should have choked.
Lying there with Martin at arm's length of me, I was afraid of myself,
and did not know what I might do next. But at last, with a great effort
to control myself, I took his hand and kissed it, and then turned my
face to the wall.

FIFTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, my
husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology,
saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I said: