disliked any manifestation of undue attention to his wants. Sometimes
he was terribly irritable and unjust, and at others almost
heartbreakingly gentle and mild. Lois had persuaded him to have the
doctor, who told him seriously that he must stay home and rest--a futile
prescription, which he treated with scorn. Rest! He knew very well that
it was not rest that he needed, but money--money, money, the elixir of
life!

It was near the end of this week when Justin came home, as Lois could
see at once, revived and encouraged, though still abstracted. He had an
invitation to take a ride in the doctor's motor, the doctor being a man
who, when the hazard of dangerous cases had been extreme, absented
himself for a couple of hours, in which, under a breathless and unholy
speed of motoring, he reversed the pressure on his nerves, and came to
the renewed sanity of a wind-swept brain when every idea had been rushed
out of it.

Lois felt that it would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he
had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such
strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it
discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it
after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong
with her appearance? She looked anxiously in the glass, and was annoyed
to find that the white fichu, open at the throat, was not on quite
straight, and her hair was a little disarranged. She was pale, and there
were dark lines under her eyes. She hated not to look nice. Yet it might
not be that. Was it, perhaps, that something else was wrong--that he had
bad news which he did not like to tell? Was he to leave her again on
some journey? She turned white for a moment, and sat down to get the
baby to sleep, and then resolutely tried to drive the thought from her.
Yet, as she sat there rocking gently, the thought still came back to
her, oddly, puzzlingly. Why had he looked at her like that? The smoke of
his pipe down-stairs kept her still aware of his presence.

Presently he came up-stairs and tiptoed into the room in clumsy fashion,
for fear of waking the baby, in his quest of a pair of gloves in a
chiffonier drawer. After finding them, he stopped for a moment in front
of her, with that odd, arrested expression once more.

"You don't mind my going out to-night and leaving you?" he murmured.
"The doctor ought to have asked _you_, instead; you need it more than
I."