ight and day were too much for any woman. She should husband her
strength, for she would want it. She was in for a very long strain. For
the old man's bodily health was marvellous. He might last like that for
another ten years, and, with care, for longer.

Nina had been drawn apart into the inner room to receive this account of
Mr. Gunning. She was shocked by the change she found in her little
friend. The Kiddy was very thin. Her pretty, slender neck was wasted,
and her childlike wrists were flattened to the bone. A sallow tint was
staining her whiteness. Her hair no longer waved in its low curves; it
fell flat and limp from the parting. Her eyes, strained, fixed in their
fear, showed a rim of white. Her mouth was set tight in defiance of her
fear. Nina noticed that there was a faint, sagging mark on either side
of it.

"Kiddy," she said, "how _will_ you----?"

"I don't know. My brain's all woolly and it won't think."

Laura closed her eyes; a way she had when she faced terror.

"Nina, it was horrible yesterday. I caught myself wishing----Oh no, I
don't; I didn't; I couldn't; it was something else, not me. It couldn't
have been me, could it?"

"No, Kiddy, of course it couldn't."

"I don't know. I feel sometimes as if I could be awful. Yesterday, I did
a cruel thing to him. I took his newspaper away from him."

She stared, agonized, as if her words were being wrenched from her with
each turn of a rack.

"I hid it. And he cried, Nina, he cried."

Her sad eyes fastened on Nina's; they clung, straining at the hope they
saw in Nina's pity.

"I can't think how I did it. I couldn't stand it, you know--the
rustling."

"Kiddy," said Nina, "you're going to pieces."

Laura shook her head. "Oh no. If I could have peace; if I could only
have peace, for three days."

"You must have it. You must go away."

"How can I go and leave him?"

"Tank's wife would come."

"Three days." It seemed as if she were considering it, as if her mind,
drowning, snatched at that straw.

She let it go. "No. It's no use going away. It would make no
difference."

She turned her face from Nina. "In some ways," she said, "it's a good
thing I've got Papa to think of."

Nina was silent. She knew what Laura meant.

XXXVIII

They had preserved as by a compact a perpetual silence on the subject of
Owen Prothero. But always, after seeing Laura, Nina had forced herself
to write to him that he might know she had been true to her