oor darling, that she cried. I
remember her saying, "Jimmy, if you'll only put your hands on my forehead
and keep them there."

I think he must have sat for hours with his hands on her forehead.

I doubt if he was ever away from her for more than a few minutes except
when one of us came and dragged him out for a walk in the Park against
his will. It was always for a walk in the Park--the same walk, through
Stanhope Gate to the end of the Serpentine and back again, so that he
could time it to a minute. He wouldn't look at his motor-car. I think he
hated it. Anyhow, I know he lent it to us until she was well enough to go
out in it again.

She wasn't well enough till April. She never would have been well enough,
she never would have been with us at all, the doctors and the nurses
said, if it hadn't been for Jimmy. He swore that they were fools when
they gave her up and said she couldn't live. He said he'd _make_ her
live. And I believe he made her.

He gave her till April to get well in; and when April came she did get
well. And he took her away to the South of France, and to Switzerland
when the months grew warmer (the doctor told him it was a risk, but he
said he'd take it); he took her in the motor-car, and he brought her back
in June, still slender but recovered.

That illness of hers saved them for the time. It reinstated him. It
improved him. He couldn't, you see, be devoted and vulgar at the same
time. All lighter agitations and excitements might be dangerous to
Jevons, but passion and great grief and grave anxiety ennobled him. He
came back from Switzerland chastened and purified of all offence. Even
Reggie couldn't have found a flaw in him.

That had always been Jevons's way. Just when you had made up your mind
that you couldn't bear him he would go and do something so beautiful that
it made your heart ache. From the very fact that he was intolerable
to-day you might be sure he'd be adorable to-morrow.

And when we saw him the night he brought Viola home, moving quietly about
the house, giving orders in that gentle voice that he had in reserve, we
thought, Really, it will be all right now. Viola's passion for him had
been near death so many times, and each time he had saved it.

We hadn't allowed for the reaction--he was bound to feel it after three
months' unnatural repression; we hadn't allowed for the reaction that
Viola was bound to feel after three years' unnatural detachment; we
hadn't allowed for t