re overstrained."

She smiled. That was so like them. They were sane when they got hold of
one stupid fact and flung it at your head. But you were overstrained
when you retaliated. When you had made a sober selection from the facts,
such a selection as constituted a truth, and presented it to them, you
were more overstrained than ever. They couldn't stand the truth.

"I don't hold _you_ responsible for his perversity," said the poor
Doctor.

"You talked as if you did."

"You misunderstood me," he said sadly. "I only asked you to do what you
could."

"I have done what I could."

He ordered her some bromide then, for her nerves.

That evening Prothero was so much better that he declared himself well.
The wind had changed to the south. She had prayed for a warm wind; and,
as it swept through the great room, she flung off her fur-lined coat and
tried to persuade herself that the weather was in Owen's favour.

At midnight the warm wind swelled to a gale. Down at the end of the
garden the iron gate cried under the menace and torture of its grip. The
sound and the rush of it filled Prothero with exultation. Neither he nor
Laura slept.

She had moved her bed close up against his, and they lay side by side.
The room was a passage for the wind; it whirled down it like a mad
thing, precipitating itself towards the mouth of the night, where the
wide north window sucked it. On the floor and the long walls the very
darkness moved. The pale yellow disc that the guarded nightlight threw
upon the ceiling swayed incessantly at the driving of the wind. The
twilight of the white beds trembled.

Outside the gust staggered and drew back; it plunged forward again, with
its charge of impetus, and hurled itself against the gate. There was a
shriek of torn iron, a crash, and the long sweeping, rending cry of live
branches wrenched from their hold, lacerated and crushed, trailing and
clinging in their fall.

Owen dragged himself up on his pillows. Laura's arm was round him.

"It's nothing," she said, "only the gate. It was bound to go."

"The gate?"

It seemed to her touch that he drew himself together.

"I said I'd come back--through it----" he whispered. "I shall--come
back"--his voice gathered a sudden, terrible, hoarse vibration--"over
it--treading it down."

At that he coughed and turned from her, hiding his face. The
handkerchief she took from him was soaked in blood. He shuddered and
shrank back, overcome by the invete