Chapter XI

JAMES dressed next morning in an atmosphere of doubt. As soon as he recognised this he disliked it extremely; doubt of any kind was uncongenial to his simple, impetuous mind. He could not, looking quickly back over what had happened, find any particular reason for blaming himself, but as the unhappy little mother had been upset he was ready to admit that somewhere, on some delicate point of sentiment, he had erred. It was a confounded nuisance; he didn't quite see, what was more, what line he ought to adopt to put it right. When women get ideas into their heads they are often--a wise man will recognise the fact--as obstinate as men. Mercifully this seldom happens. Most women's minds move with certainty only among the small values of social life where one can give way to them with a shrug of the shoulders. Here, however, the unusual had happened and something would have to be done. In the intervals of dressing he pictured to himself, with a smile, poor Mary perched precariously on the back of her great high horse of Utopian justice, imagining, brave little soul, that she could control such an ancient deceiver of man. It was a pathetic conception, and a trifle disquieting, for if he knew Mary she'd be thrown off before she came off of her own accord.

He sighed as he caught sight in the glass of the curious ungraceful gesture of a man who is tightening the knot of his tie.

These ideas were in the air--even one's womenfolk weren't free from them. Mary had certainly caught this excitement from Rosemary--he had been, perhaps, rather blind not to foresee it. Trent had foreseen it all right, for what that was worth. Well, Rosemary would be marrying before long, and then her influence over her mother would be interrupted--James could not conceive of Mary's defying him without somebody's sustaining influence. In another year Rosemary would be busy with her natural duties and Mary would have settled down to happy evenings for the girls or something equally harmless. His line--that quick way out of a difficulty which he always sought--was to hang the idea of a public company over Mary's head, and suggest to Rosemary that it was time she made her Hastings happy--James didn't believe in long engagements. He might, too, turn Mary on to some sort of convalescent affair by the seaside--she had suggested one herself, he remembered. He wished he had thought of referring to that last night--then she would not have found him unsympathetic.

It was Tuesday, his early day, when he went to East London, and he did not expect to find anyone down to breakfast. Mary, after an illness she had had two years before, had been forbidden to shorten her sleep. However, Rosemary, for purposes of her own, was also up early, looking as delightful as she was accustomed to look in the morning.

James kissed her with the pleasure which this act always inspired in him, and told her that he was glad to have somebody to pour out his coffee. "Though I imagine it won't be for very much longer," he added.

Rosemary did not allow this attack to ruffle her pleasing tranquillity. She considered that emotion is wasted on the ordinary commerce of life. "I wanted to speak to you about that, father," she told James. "Anthony and I think we would like to get married soon, but of course it depends upon you. Tony is making £400 a year now, and he doesn't think you will think that sufficient. I know nothing about it, I'm afraid."

James accepted this challenge. "Oh, no, you wouldn't. You modern young ladies take an interest in everything except your own business. Do you intend, may I ask, to go on knowing nothing about it after you are married?"

Rosemary turned calm eyes upon her father, who was helping himself to some kidneys in his most brisk and efficient manner. "Oh, no," she told him. "I expect when one's got to do it, it will be quite interesting, only I don't think--do you?--that it's worth giving very much time to beforehand. As a matter of fact I am having cooking lessons. I could grill your kidneys for you better than this."

James was delighted to hear it, and assured her that he would be glad to know of any definite amount that she and her Anthony would consider sufficient.

Rosemary didn't know, but in any case she would prefer not to take more than Anthony was earning.

This conflicted with James's common-sense. "If I may advise you," he told her, "take what you can get. You know that we are giving Laura £1000."

Rosemary considered a moment. "After all, Tony will soon be earning more," she conceded, "and we could always do good with it."

"Tip our waitresses with it," suggested James.

Rosemary looked up. There had been something brutal in her father's voice. She had long ago decided that he could be a brute if he liked, though he seldom was.

"No," she said, and waited for him to say more.

James could not easily resist a quiet concentrated attitude of attention. "That's how your mother wants to spend her income," he went on, "as I daresay you know."

Rosemary flushed with interest. "Does she?--I didn't know--how perfectly splendid of her! Do you think she really will?"

James grunted, evading the question. "Oh, then it wasn't you who suggested it?"

His daughter shook her head. "No, mother never--hardly ever--talks to me about that sort of thing. And it isn't what I should have suggested if she had. I should have advised her to give it to the Women's Trade Union League, and tell them to spend it on forming a waitresses' union. Then she would benefit all the girls in the trade. I don't think it's much good tinkering with a business here and a business there. But what is so splendid is that mother should want to give up the money, that she should have thought of it all by herself!"

"I'm not going to discuss your mother with you," said James, whose memory, in discussions, was short. "And I'm not going to give you a thousand a year to spend in fomenting discontent among my employees, if that's what you mean by doing good with it. But if you'll send Hastings to me, I'll discuss the matter with him. It seems to me, my dear daughter, that the sooner you're safely married the better."

He grunted again and went back to his breakfast. For some minutes they continued to eat their food in silence. Rosemary never argued with her father if she could help it. They were generally on excellent terms, for she found him amusing, indulgent, and on the whole much more enlightened and civilised than one had any right to expect from a father. She was fond of him, and she enjoyed his stories, his quick superficial accounts of his impressions. But he wasn't a person with whom she would ever have become intimate, she had decided, if she had met him casually in the world. He lacked, she felt, the detachment and reserve she admired in her mother. She did not mean to judge him priggishly. She sometimes reminded herself, if she thought she had been harsh, that before very long some other young person would contemplate her failures as a parent with equal detachment. But she did not realise the pitiful nakedness, the defencelessness, of a parent's position. There was no wonder in her mind even as to what poor James was thinking now. It seemed natural to her that life should present itself to her and to her mother under aspects that James could not approve. She knew that he did not like her own ideas, he never had, although he had been charming about them. There was no essential reason, that she could see, why he should like the ideas of her mother. She was busy now planning an interview with Mary. Whatever small support she could give would be at her mother's service. Rosemary admired courage, and she admired all action dictated by principle--she was stirred to find her mother so admirable.

Meanwhile James was thinking no less intently. The whole thing was a nuisance which, lest it should worry him, must be dealt with as speedily as possible. The public company idea was the thing. He would see his solicitors and he would speak to Trent. As a matter of fact a little extra capital would come in very well just now. It had seemed to him for some time that a great deal could be done with picture palaces. Trent was perfectly capable of running the present business by himself, and he, James, was getting a little bored with the monotony of it. The time had come for a new development. Why not cinema shows with your tea and a biscuit free, as that was the custom, but cakes and pastries charged for? There could be intervals when dainty little cakes would be handed round. People who were taking other people out would be certain to buy them. In the evening there could be sandwiches. He'd run the cinema part under another name, and only announce that the Imperial had the contract for the catering. The tea they gave you at most of these places, he'd been told, was undrinkable; he'd look in some afternoon and try for himself. Naturally these odd and end companies wouldn't do the thing as well as the Imperial. If he decided that this was a good idea there'd be no sort of difficulty about raising the capital. Their finances were more than sound. He could practically float the thing at any figure he liked--as long, that was, as Mary didn't land him with a strike on his hands. What an extraordinary world it was--James didn't know what was coming over women!

However, this plan would fix Mary right enough, as far as interfering with wages went. Of course he couldn't prevent her from giving away her own money, though he could discourage it. But they had always lived far below their income--to spend less than he had was for James a matter of pride--she could give away a good deal before it really mattered.

The idea of action, of taking risks, of starting something new, restored his normal good humour. He wasn't a fossil yet--they needn't think it. His picture palaces--if he decided to have them--should be as up-to-date and as characteristic as his tea-shops. They should be really dignified--to begin with--in the way of architecture--no tawdry stucco and white paint. It was worth getting in a good architect for a uniform elevation. Their own young men could fix it up for each particular site. There is something about a good architect's work that you don't get in any other way. Besides, there is patriotism. It would be pleasant to feel that his fronts were well thought of, say at the club, whose members talked a good deal about architecture. He was a poor man when he started the tea-shops, but even then his taste had been good. One secret of it--given good taste--was to see to the whole thing personally. He'd run over to Paris and choose his own films--no agents for him. And he'd look at those new American patents for coloured pictures.

He finished his breakfast and said good-bye to Rosemary without any ill-feeling. Poor child--he could afford to be good-natured. He could not seriously doubt his ability to manage a couple of women. Most men would have harangued them, lectured them, put their backs up. James preferred to preserve the amenities of life while out-manœuvring his opponents. Scolding was a woman's game, a fool's game, it never paid. If a man couldn't be the head of his own house without making a fuss about it he deserved what ignominy came his way. James went upstairs in excellent spirits to kiss Mary good-bye.

He found her still in bed, and he kissed her with the decision of an affectionate husband and the caution of a man who does not want to get fluff from the blankets on to his clothes. He was glad to see her looking better, she mustn't do too much to-day, and he hoped she felt as fond of him as he did of her. She was a vain old thing with her mob cap--personally he liked to see her hair even if it did look untidy. Nonsense--who minded if it was a little grey! He stroked her cheek with his finger and was off. The room seemed to echo with his voice after he had gone.

Mary did not get up for some time. She was feeling tired, and on Tuesdays she generally had breakfast in bed. Besides, she had still to take stock of what she was going to do. She knew that through the long hours of the night, as she lay awake, she had pondered defiant plans of incredible daring and yet so simple, so just, that only tyranny itself could refuse consent to them. But now in the morning it was different. It struck her, now, as monstrous that she should have thought of flouting James. His authority, for her, appeared as an ultimate fact. If he refused to increase the girls' wages the matter was settled. But her own perception of justice and injustice--she saw that clearly--was also an ultimate fact. The money belonged to the girls and it must be used for them. Her task was now to think of ways and means. She had even come to feel that she might do more with the money by controlling it herself than by doling it out in shillings to ignorant girls. As for James, whatever happened she must preserve her personal relation with him. It could never again perhaps be quite what it had been, its foundation of confident ignorance was gone. But what he was prepared to give her still was all that he had ever given her. He had not changed. She could still, if she chose, be as much to him as she had ever been. And she felt this sunny morning an extraordinary thirst and hunger for his love, for his tenderness and his esteem. When he had come just now into her quiet room she had realised suddenly how strong he was, how much his strength and his buoyancy meant to her; how precise, how small, how rigid her life would have been without them. She had found, too, she thought, in the pain of their recent intercourse, a new sense of the intimacy of marriage. She lay, after all, very much at James's mercy, and he at hers. It was no small thing, the affection that urged them to ease the strain for one another. As she went through the day she touched at a thousand points little whims of James's, little trivial extensions of his personality. She met them with sympathy, with tolerance at worst, because they were his. Under her care, in her hands, he moved freely, he grew as he pleased; his delicacy, his sensitiveness, were safe. This favouring atmosphere she had provided consciously--it would have been her duty to do so, even if it had not been her pride--but she understood now for the first time that James, whether consciously or not, must have performed the same offices for her. If her growth had been pruned and trained, her character disciplined, it was by her own set purpose, in accordance with her own conscience, not by any harshness or cruelty of outside pressure. She could see, she told herself, the sort of repressed little woman she might have been, the narrow, dragging, timid creature a dearth of kindness might have made of her. She had had full measure of kindness all her life, it was only this kindness, this, impunity from attack that made her able now to consult her own nature and believe in what it told her. She did believe in it, she could not but be loyal to that, but she could--she must--in addition be scrupulously loyal to James. James's wisdom, his deliberate decisions, must come first; her own little vanities and disappointments, her unrestrained longings, fell naturally into a second place. As to the practical question, she would tell Miss Percival that this money was at her disposal and they would soon think of something to do with it. It was clear that a hundred things needed doing--they had only to choose. Then she could throw herself heart and soul into whatever it was. She told herself that she would probably cease to worry when she was back at her familiar business of organising and had left this difficult region of decision behind.

It was a day on which Miss Percival did not come until the afternoon, and Mary, after she had dressed, spent the morning pretending to read a pamphlet on the dangers of street trading. She agreed with the pamphlet, and for the moment she found agreement a relief. Soon after twelve Rosemary came into her room. She had, she informed her mother when she had kissed her, been out with Tony trying his electric motor-bicycle. It was quite different from all other motor-bicycles and very much better, because Tony had invented a new kind of accumulator that was very small and light. If it worked it was going to revolutionise all sorts of things, not merely motor-bicycles, but it wasn't really quite finished yet, so it couldn't be a matter for wonder that something had broken down. Tony had had to come back by train in order not to be too appallingly late at the office, and she had had to get an old farmer to shelter the motor-bicycle, and then come back by herself. He had been a dear old farmer, and he had produced a charming daughter, a little person with pink cheeks and black hair. She and Rosemary had smiled at each other with the friendly pleasure young women feel in one another's beauty. Rosemary wished she knew more about engineering, it was the subject of all others that she found most difficult. She never could carry three dimensional ideas in her head.

Rosemary had thrown down her hat, and was sitting now on a stool at Mary's feet, looking up at her while she chattered. It was not often that she talked like this to her mother, freely and childishly, without any thought of effect or consequences, and Mary's heart grew light as she listened. This wise young Rosemary was a child still, a dear, happy child; love-making and lovers' vows had not checked the development of her mind or impaired its freshness. Her mother could laugh without a second thought at the old farmer's astonishment, at his scorn of a woman left in charge of a motor-bicycle, and at the sad plight of that distinguished and ingenious machine stowed away between a harrow and a dilapidated cart.

"I know all the little boys in the place will be trying to make it go," Rosemary was saying, "and Tony will be dreadfully cross, but it was the best that I could do." She did not seem afraid of Tony's crossness.

After she had finished neither of them said anything for a moment or two. Then Rosemary, overcoming a sudden unusual shyness, put her hand on Mary's arm.

"Mother, father says you think you feel we're taking too much money from the business. Tony and I think so, too; I mean, we'll willingly take less allowance than father has offered us, if it'll make things any easier for you." Her glowing face, upturned, wore a look of passionate sincerity. "It's so splendid of you, mother--don't think me horrid--you know that anyhow I couldn't love you more than I do, but it is so--so jolly to feel we're on the same side." She dropped her eyes hastily.

An impulse surged through Mary to stoop and take the child in her arms, to press her cheek against her daughter's cheek, to tell her, now that she could, what a world of unsatisfied love had been satisfied by her words. But she was afraid of Rosemary's shyness, of her own shyness, she was afraid of this Tony who might ask what "your mother" had said, and how she had taken it. The impulse was checked--she could find no words detached or restrained enough, and when she did speak she only brought out a little absurd denial.

"My darling, I'm afraid I'm still a conservative old thing, you young socialists are too revolutionary for me, but I certainly do feel that something must be done."

She paused, and Rosemary, with a gleam in the eyes her mother thought so beautiful, broke in on her. "Don't talk like father, mother, you're not an old thing, you're young and you're brave, and you're a darling!" She came closer and laid her head against her mother's knee.

Mary could say nothing, but her hand trembled with tenderness as she laid it on her daughter's hair.

Rosemary spoke first. It was pleasant to her to find herself in such intimate, such affectionate accord with her mother, but she was not accustomed to accept or enjoy an emotional state without analysis and a following out of its implications.

"I don't suppose we should agree about the exact thing that ought to be done," she began presently, "but after all it isn't that that matters. Tony says I'm hopelessly dogmatic, and I do feel that I know the best thing to do, and I can't really see why other people shouldn't agree with me. Of course I know I've got to refrain from trying to make them, but still"--she sighed, and arranged herself more comfortably on the stool--"I can't help feeling I'm right and they're wrong. But after all, I tell myself, it's the feeling that's important. If enough people want to alter a thing badly enough it will be altered in the long run." She ended on a somewhat doubtful note.

"What is it you want me to do, little daughter?" Mary smoothed back a tress of fine brown hair as she spoke.

The light touch on her forehead seemed to soften Rosemary's desire to impose her conclusions on the world. "Honestly, mother," she said after a moment's thought, "I don't want you to do anything. I want lots of people to give money for starting a waitresses' union, but I want you to do what you feel you ought to do. You see, I didn't suggest the whole thing to father simply because I wanted you to be free, to see for yourself and trust yourself--do you mind my talking like this?" She broke off suddenly.

Mary was conscious of confused emotions, but not, so far as she could tell, of minding. She laughed.

"I suppose it was partly just my curiosity," her daughter went on relentlessly, "but mostly it was because I loved you, and because I had a feeling, that day when I told you about Tony, that you were much stronger, much more important--I don't know how to put it--than anybody knew. And I think too that I wanted to prove to myself that marriage isn't a grave--that one can come up out of it." She ended, and sat quietly looking down at the carpet.

Mary did not answer her, no answer seemed necessary. She had been conscious all that morning of some queer disturbance in her mind, a check to her reasoning, a deepening and strengthening of her emotion. Now when the moment came for speaking to Rosemary she felt suddenly detached from herself, lifted above the thoughts that troubled her. Down there James's Mary, Rosemary's Mary, struggled with plans and decisions, with things that were good or bad, and kind or cruel. Here, where she was, these values fell away. She had drawn back into some state of her being too simple, too fundamental, for the labels and measurements of experience. "They are names," she thought, "love and pain, sorrow and happiness--tricks of thinking, empty, arbitrary...."

Presently she noticed Rosemary's voice, a quivering sound that came towards her from a long way off.

"Mother, it's time I told you, Tony thinks that he and I ought to get married--do you mind very much?--will it hurt you?"

Mary felt Rosemary's warm skin now against her hand. A moment later she heard herself speaking. "My dear, why should it hurt me? Be happy. If it will make you happy, why should I mind? After all--" She did not finish her thought, she had not the strength or the will, she felt, to go on speaking.

A moment later she became conscious of a confusion of noises. A bell rang--she was certain of that--then someone was touching her. She roused herself to take in what her maid was saying. "Fetch Dr. Tanner at once, I should say, Miss, and shall I telephone to the master? Her hands are like ice----"

Mary could not quite make out whether she was succeeding in speaking or not. She was perfectly all right, she wanted to tell them, there was no need to worry James. She only felt a little giddy. She must have said something, for she realised later that Rosemary was reassuring her. They would see first what the doctor said--now they were going to carry her on to the sofa. She felt a vague pleasure, after a period of extreme discomfort, at finding herself on the sofa.

By the time the doctor came Mary was feeling better, and the doctor himself did not think there was anything serious the matter. He had always suspected Mrs. Heyham, he told her, of being one of your nervous high-strung people who will not listen to advice. She must go to bed for the rest of the day, and she must be careful. We have all of us to be careful when we aren't as young as we were--she mustn't excite herself, and she must eat more, she was thin; he would tell Mr. Heyham, when he saw him, to keep her quiet.

"Careful--careful--careful"--with a hundred voices whispering the word in her ears, Mary, when she had been put to bed and fed on beef tea and toast, fell asleep.

She woke, later on, with a sense that something was happening in the house. She did not remember that she was ill, or stop to inquire why she found herself in bed, but rang the bell to discover what this disturbing thing could be. A moment later the door opened cautiously, and James appeared. At the sight of his face she understood at once. Of course--she hadn't been well, and James was upset about it.

"My darling," she told him, "I assure you I'm perfectly well--come and kiss me----"

James came to kiss her, guarding an unusual silence. He had so much to say, that if he had spoken at all he would have spoken too much. He had all his fears to tell her--his regrets, the remorse with which he remembered that he had had to be firm with her the night before. He did not blame himself--what he had said had been necessary, and he knew that he had not said it unkindly. Nevertheless he felt remorse. Poor little thing, wasn't it his duty to keep her well and happy, and wasn't she, on the contrary, lying here ill? Very well then--James's heart was full as he sat down on the bed by her side and took her hand in his.

Mary, whose sudden moment of lucidity had left her feeling giddy again, was nevertheless impressed by his silence. Poor James--he must be suffering! She touched his arm with her free hand and looked up at him anxiously. "James," she implored him, "please, please don't think this has anything to do with you. I'm not ill at all really. I was just feeling rather tired!"

James, who had been staring across the room, turned round to her. "You're not to talk, little thing, and you're not to think either. Hold my hand, and be still and go to sleep!" He spoke with a new, a compelling authority. Mary willingly laid aside the burden of speech and lay looking peacefully at the ceiling. The light on the ceiling was mellow, it must be late in the afternoon. She wanted to know the time, but she did not want it enough to turn her head towards the clock. With James so close to her there was really no need to know anything.

James, who had seen her face relax at his words, was prepared to sit by her all night. She could not have appealed more directly to his love and tenderness than by showing him, as she had done with her eager grasp on his fingers, that she found rest and comfort in his presence. As he waited there with his wife, debarred from talking to her, James thought her over, and among his thoughts, though he did not know it, was a new conception of her. She was a queer little thing, and brave, he recognised that there was a fine element in her obstinacy. She would do what she thought right, follow out her dreams and her foolish big ideas and not care if she suffered for them. He saw her suddenly under the type--familiar to him in obituary notices--of a lofty, restless spirit wearing through its frail envelope of flesh. James was not often mistaken in a man whom he had decided to be capable and honest, and he thought himself therefore a good judge of character. This description of Mary pleased him. He must take great care, he told himself, of his little idealist. He must see that she didn't break her bright wings over the hard facts of life. He must teach her that she wasn't just her own to wear out and throw away if she pleased.

He'd already spoken seriously to Rosemary, when he came home and found out what had happened. He'd speak to that secretary too--he never could remember the woman's name--and tell her that she wasn't to let Mrs. Heyham get tired or excited. Perhaps Mary would take the doctor's warning to heart of her own accord, take it to heart somehow she must and should. He'd think it over before he decided, and he wasn't sure that it wouldn't be better to stop this philanthropic business altogether.

At this point, before he could tell himself that he had thought it over, the maid came in with a cupful of something on a tray. Mary, roused from her comfortable indifference, regarded it with dislike. It was some sort of thick white stuff which had been carefully prepared by the cook according to the directions on the tin, and Mary felt certain, as soon as she saw it, that she would not be hungry again for several days, and that meanwhile there was nothing in the world so difficult and disagreeable as the task of swallowing this pasty, ignominious preparation. Every inch of her quivered under the impulse of resistance. "No, James, I can't," she told him as he took the cup.

James, bending towards her, was confirmed in his fears that she was really ill. As a rule she ate with indifference any dish that the rest of the household liked, though she sometimes expressed in private, as though she were ashamed of them, faint likings for muscatel grapes and for some little dry biscuits James used to bring her home from an Austrian café. He could see now that she was working herself up. "Now, my dear," he said to her, in the tone that he judged would be the most effective, "we've got to feed you up, you know. I don't know what this is, but it's what the doctor ordered, and I expect it contains as much nourishment as a pound of beef-steak. Will you drink it, or shall I feed you with the spoon?"

Mary's anxiety for her sheets reinforced her recognition that James meant to have his own way. She held out her hand for the cup, though she was nearly crying, and drank as much as she could. Then with a little sob she put the cup back again. James examined it doubtfully, the beverage was not finished, and he did not feel certain that she oughtn't to finish it. But something in her face made him merciful. "Well, I'll let you off this time," he told her, "but I'm going to see that you eat every scrap of your dinner. If you're not good I shall telegraph for a nurse. Now, shall I have my tea brought up here, or would you rather not watch me eating?"

So it was only tea time--and they had sent for him. She turned puzzled eyes towards him, the problem seemed too complicated for her single solution. Then a way out presented itself. "I think I'll go to sleep," she told him, "if you don't mind."

He said something, but she did not remember what.

Next morning, when she woke, Mary's brain had cleared. The doctor came and went, and after his visit everyone else appeared with smiling face and told her that she was all right, that she had simply been run down, and that all she had to do was to stay in bed for a day or two, and take great care of herself. "At Mrs. Heyham's age," the doctor had said to James, "she can't be too careful," and James had taken precious possession of the phrase, though he would have been the first to scout its importance if the doctor had used it of himself or of Mary's charwoman.

"Now mind, no worrying," he told his wife, "and I've wired to that secretary of yours that she's not to show her face here for a week."

He nodded cheerfully and hurried away, for he had stayed late at home in order to hear the doctor's verdict.

Mary let him go without showing him the indignation that she felt. She was forty-six, at an age when a man is considered in the prime of his life, and they wanted to treat her as though she were delicate like a child or a bent old woman. It was quite natural, a great many wealthy women let themselves be treated like that. She herself had been far too apt to talk of herself as old, to behave as though her faculties were decaying. As she lay in bed with a bell under her hand and her maid in the next room attentive to her slightest signal, Mary realised that her attitude to life had changed. A year ago she would hardly have struggled when they tried to rivet upon her these chains of infirmity. She would have given up, gracefully, what they told her to give up, she would have avoided worry and avoided excitement and remembered to be careful. She would have begun to feel the weather, and soon have found herself with a regular system of good days and bad days and indifferent days. Her friends would have pitied James, and told one another how well she bore her failing health. She could see herself, simply, without hypocrisy, slipping into such a state. She was not strong with the robust and hardy strength of some fortunate people, she was easily made to feel tired, and to look a little pale. She had only to think about that and to be alarmed about it, to get Dr. Tanner to give it a name, and mention it with an air of resignation to James, and the walls of invalid habits would build themselves round her.

But she wasn't an invalid, she told herself, she was strong, she had more force than ten of these flourishing women. She was forty-six, but her intellectual life was only beginning. She felt, as she looked at the magazines provided by James's forethought, that she could not spare an hour of it to illness. She did not shrink even from the task of making James agree with her. She was feeling very fond of James this morning--who could help it who had seen the cheer on his face after the doctor's visit?--but she was not feeling emotional about him. As a concession, to avoid fuss, she stayed in bed, but she rang for Penn, and told her to find the pamphlet on street trading. It was not until she had finished the pamphlet--without, it is true, gaining any very clear understanding of its contents--that she recalled, as one recalls what has happened in a dream, Rosemary's voice announcing that she was going to be married.