Livy. She's Mrs. Huxtable. I fancy they all think I'm
dead in the bush in Australia. I had a narrow squeak there...."

"Now, Gerry darling, I'll tell you what I want you to do...."

"Yes, dear, I will."

"You can't tell me all these things now, and you'll be ill; so lie
down on the bed there, and I'll sit by you till you go to sleep. Or
look, you get to bed comfortably, and I'll be back in a few minutes
and sit by you. Just till you go off. Now do as I tell you."

He obeyed like a child. It was wonderful how, in the returning power
of her self-command, she took him, as it were, in hand, and rescued
him from the tension of his bewilderment. Apart from the fact that the
fibre of her nature was exceptionally strong, her experience of this
last hour had removed the most part of the oppression that had weighed
her down for more than a twelvemonth--the doubt as to which way a
discovery of his past would tell on her husband's love for her. She
had no feeling now but anxiety on his behalf, and this really helped
her towards facing the situation calmly. All things do that take us
out of ourselves.

She stood again a moment outside Sally's door to make sure she was not
moving, then went to her own room, not sorry to be alone. She wanted
a pause for the whirl in her brain to stop, for the torrent of new
event that had rushed in upon it to find its equilibrium. If Gerry fell
asleep before she returned to him so much the better! She did not even
light her candle, preferring to be in the dark.

But this did not long defer her return to her husband's room. A very
few minutes in the darkness and the silence of her own were enough for
her, and she was grateful for both. Then she went back, to find him
in bed, sitting up and pressing his fingers on his eyes, as one does
when suffering from nervous headache. But he disclaimed any such
feeling in answer to her inquiry. She sat down beside him, holding his
hand, just as she had done in the night of the storm, and begged him
for her sake and his own to try to sleep. It would all seem so much
easier and clearer in the morning.

Yes, he would sleep, he said. And, indeed, he had resolved to affect
sleep, so as to induce her to go away herself and rest. But it was not
so easy. Half-grasped facts went and came--recollections that he knew
he should before long be able to marshal in their proper order
and make harmonious. For the time being, though they had not the
nightmare character of th