e of it. The room was terribly stiff and uncomfortable. There
were hats in the chairs, and medicine bottles among the books. He tried
to read, but good books were too good, and bad books were too bad, and
the only thing he could tolerate was the newspaper, which with its
news of London, and the movements of real people who were giving
dinner-parties and making speeches, seemed to give a little background
of reality to what was otherwise mere nightmare. Then, just as his
attention was fixed on the print, a soft call would come from Helen, or
Mrs. Chailey would bring in something which was wanted upstairs, and he
would run up very quietly in his socks, and put the jug on the little
table which stood crowded with jugs and cups outside the bedroom door;
or if he could catch Helen for a moment he would ask, "How is she?"

"Rather restless. . . . On the whole, quieter, I think."

The answer would be one or the other.

As usual she seemed to reserve something which she did not say, and
Terence was conscious that they disagreed, and, without saying it
aloud, were arguing against each other. But she was too hurried and
pre-occupied to talk.

The strain of listening and the effort of making practical arrangements
and seeing that things worked smoothly, absorbed all Terence's power.
Involved in this long dreary nightmare, he did not attempt to think what
it amounted to. Rachel was ill; that was all; he must see that there
was medicine and milk, and that things were ready when they were wanted.
Thought had ceased; life itself had come to a standstill. Sunday was
rather worse than Saturday had been, simply because the strain was
a little greater every day, although nothing else had changed. The
separate feelings of pleasure, interest, and pain, which combine to make
up the ordinary day, were merged in one long-drawn sensation of sordid
misery and profound boredom. He had never been so bored since he was
shut up in the nursery alone as a child. The vision of Rachel as she was
now, confused and heedless, had almost obliterated the vision of her as
she had been once long ago; he could hardly believe that they had ever
been happy, or engaged to be married, for what were feelings, what
was there to be felt? Confusion covered every sight and person, and he
seemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray people who came up now and
then from the hotel to enquire, through a mist; the only people who were
not hidden in this mist were Helen a