of circumstance. How much the enforced companionship with Mrs.
Armine had oppressed him he understood fully now. And it was difficult
for him to realize, more difficult still for him to sympathize with,
Nigel's obvious regret at his wife's going, obvious longing for her to
be back again by his side.

Isaacson's sympathy was not asked for by Nigel. Here the strong reserve
existing between the two men naturally stepped in. Isaacson strove to
dissimulate his joy, Nigel to dissimulate his feeling of sudden
loneliness. But either Isaacson played his part the better, or his
powers of observation were far more developed than Nigel's; for whereas
he saw with almost painful clearness the state of his friend's mind on
that first evening of their dual solitude, Nigel only partially guessed
at his, or very faintly suspected it.

Their dinner together threatened at first to be dreary. For Mrs.
Armine's going, instead of breaking down, had consolidated for the
moment the reserve between them. But Isaacson's inner joyousness,
however carefully concealed, made its influence felt, as joy will.
Without quite knowing why, Nigel presently began to thaw. Isaacson
turned the conversation, which had stumbled, had halted, to Nigel's
condition of health, and then Nigel said, as he had already said to his
wife:

"To-day I feel that I am waking up to life."

"Only to-day?" said the Doctor.

"Oh, I've been feeling better and better, but to-day it's as if a door
that had been creaking on its hinges was flung wide open."

"I'm not surprised. These sudden leaps forward are often a feature of
convalescence."

"They--they aren't followed by falling back, are they?" Nigel asked,
with a sudden change to uneasiness.

"Sometimes, in fever cases especially. But in a case like yours we
needn't anticipate anything of that kind."

The last words seemed to suggest to Nigel some train of thought, and
after sitting in silence two or three minutes, looking grave and rather
preoccupied, he said:

"By the way, what has been the matter with me, exactly? What have I
really had in the way of an illness? All this time I've been so occupied
in being ill that I've never asked you."

The last words were said with an attempt at lightness.

"Have I?" he added.

"No, I don't think you have," said Isaacson, in a voice that suggested a
nature at that moment certainly not inclined to be communicative.

"Has it been all sunstroke! But--but I'm sure it hasn't."