Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser, expert in the business of societies and committees.

In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the house, and that he did not return to it.

In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The business of the day again absorbed her.

In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and perfect training.

He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled.

On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls.

The church services were now the only link left between her soul and God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most private personal possession.

For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours that waited for her as their prey.

It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse than dead.

She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete.

She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the drawing-room that overlooked the street.

About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door.

She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished to speak to her at once.

Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed again in a firm fold.

He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility alarmed her.

"What is it?" she asked.

Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and suffocated it.

"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie."

"Tell me," she whispered.

"Walter is ill—very dangerously ill."

"He is dead."

The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting.

"No. He is not dead."

Her heart beat again.

"He's dying, then."

"They don't know."

"Where is he?"

"At Scarby."

"Scarby? How much time have I?"

"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five—seven minutes?"

"Yes."

She rang the bell.

"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes, ready to start.

"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station.

"HÆmorrhage of the brain."

"The brain?"

"Apoplexy."

"Is he unconscious?"

"Yes."

She closed her eyes.

"He will not know me," she said.

Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed.

A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror.

"We shall miss the train—if we stop."

"No, no, we've plenty of time."

They waited.

"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way."

"We shall miss the train if we do that."

"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn—up there."

The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.

The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had it to themselves.

The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby.

A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close. She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief made her passive now.

Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the relief of tears.

But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.

As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.

A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.

She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.

She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side.

His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket. A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it.

The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was paralysed.

And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear the weight of it.

Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him.

After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment. Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and creaseless.

He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that.

She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about him was very white and clean. She was glad.

She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at him, to see, her hands touching him.

A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting and watching.

Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning, came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear of what he would say to her presently.

He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he was going to say "There is no hope."

"Will he get better?" she said.

"I cannot tell you."

The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with the case.

"It's impossible to say. He may get better. He may even get well. But I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that."

"You can give no hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real thought.

"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not—exclusively—in favour of recovery."

"The chances?"

"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get well—perfectly well."

"And if it does not absorb?"

"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other. But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely."

She pictured it.

"Ah—but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?"

"Well—there may be further lesions—in which case—"

"He will die?"

"He may die. He may die any moment."

She accepted it, abandoning hope.

"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?"

"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has lived—up till now—Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate life. That is so?"

"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always—always. Why?"

The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not bear.

"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no why, of course. That is in his favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which would predispose to the attack."

"Would a shock—predispose him?"

"A shock?"

"Any very strong emotion—"

"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he—that you—had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?"

"A month—nearly five weeks."

"Ah—so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there had been any recent violent emotion—"

"It would account for it?"

"Yes, yes, it might account for it."

"Thank you."

He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can—"

"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know."

She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign.

The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call.

When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed, wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray for now. She prayed only that he might live.

And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it was heard.