s, nor Gerda from hers.

Neville, to change the subject (though scarcely for the better), read her
"The Autobiography of Mrs. Asquith" till tea-time.

4

They all talked about it again, and said the same things, and different
things, and more things, and got no nearer one another with it all. Soon
Barry and Gerda, each comprehending the full measure of the serious
intent of the other, stood helpless before it, the one in half-amused
exasperation, the other in obstinate determination.

"She means business, then," thought Barry. "He won't come round," thought
Gerda and their love pierced and stabbed them, making Barry hasty of
speech and Gerda sullen.

"The _waste_ of it," said Barry, on Sunday evening, "when I've only
got one day in the week, to spend it quarrelling about marriage. I've
hundreds of things to talk about and tell you--interesting things, funny
things--but I never get to them, with all this arguing we have to have
first."

"I don't want to argue, Barry. Let's not. We've said everything now, lots
of times. There can't be any more. Tell me your things instead!"

He told her, and they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought
differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the
background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and
make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the
other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own
way, since you won't have it mine and I love you." But neither did. Their
wills stood as stiff as two rocks over against one another.

Gerda grew thinner under the strain, and healed more slowly than before.
Her fragile, injured body was a battle-ground between her will and her
love, and suffered in the conflict. Barry saw that it could not go on.
They would, he said, stop talking about it; they would put it in the
background and go on as if it were not there, until such time as they
could agree. So they became friends again, lovers who lived in the
present and looked to no future, and, since better might not be, that had
to do for the time.

CHAPTER XI

THAT WHICH REMAINS

1

Through September Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night.
The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the
winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown.

"You've been overworking," he told her. "You're not strong enough in
these days to stand hard br