Mrs. Phillips was asleep. Joan seated herself beside the bed and waited.

She had not yet made herself up for the day and the dyed hair was hidden beneath a white, close-fitting cap. The pale, thin face with its closed eyes looked strangely young. Suddenly the thin hands clasped, and her lips moved, as if she were praying in her sleep. Perhaps she also was dreaming of Gethsemane. It must be quite a crowded garden, if only we could see it.

After a while, her eyes opened. Joan drew her chair nearer and slipped her arm in under her, and their eyes met.

"You're not playing the game," whispered Joan, shaking her head. "I only promised on condition that you would try to get well."

The woman made no attempt to deny. Something told her that Joan had learned her secret. She glanced towards the door. Joan had closed it.

"Don't drag me back," she whispered. "It's all finished." She raised herself up and put her arms about Joan's neck. "It was hard at first, and I hated you. And then it came to me that this was what I had been wanting to do, all my life--something to help him, that n.o.body else could do. Don't take it from me."

"I know," whispered Joan. "I've been there, too. I knew you were doing it, though I didn't quite know how--till the other day. I wouldn't think. I wanted to pretend that I didn't. I know all you can say. I've been listening to it. It was right of you to want to give it all up to me for his sake. But it would be wrong of me to take it. I don't quite see why. I can't explain it. But I mustn't. So you see it would be no good."

"But I'm so useless," pleaded the woman.

"I said that," answered Joan. "I wanted to do it and I talked and talked, so hard. I said everything I could think of. But that was the only answer: I mustn't do it."

They remained for a while with their arms round one another. It struck Joan as curious, even at the time, that all feeling of superiority had gone out of her. They might have been two puzzled children that had met one another on a path that neither knew. But Joan was the stronger character.

"I want you to give me up that box," she said, "and to come away with me where I can be with you and take care of you until you are well."

Mrs. Phillips made yet another effort. "Have you thought about him?" she asked.

Joan answered with a faint smile. "Oh, yes," she said. "I didn't forget that argument in case it hadn't occurred to the Lord."

"Perhaps," she added, "the helpmate theory was intended to apply only to our bodies. There was nothing said about our souls. Perhaps G.o.d doesn't have to work in pairs. Perhaps we were meant to stand alone."

Mrs. Phillips's thin hands were playing nervously with the bed clothes.

There still seemed something that she had to say. As if Joan hadn't thought of everything. Her eyes were fixed upon the narrow strip of light between the window curtains.

"You don't think you could, dear," she whispered, "if I didn't do anything wicked any more. But just let things take their course."

"You see, dear," she went on, her face still turned away, "I thought it all finished. It will be hard for me to go back to him, knowing as I do now that he doesn't want me. I shall always feel that I am in his way.

And Hilda," she added after a pause, "she will hate me."

Joan looked at the white patient face and was silent. What would be the use of senseless contradiction. The woman knew. It would only seem an added stab of mockery. She knelt beside the bed, and took the thin hands in hers.

"I think G.o.d must want you very badly," she said, "or He wouldn't have laid so heavy a cross upon you. You will come?"

The woman did not answer in words. The big tears were rolling down her cheeks. There was no paint to mingle with and mar them. She drew the little metal box from under the pillow and gave it into Joan's hands.

Joan crept out softly from the room.

The nurse was standing by the window. She turned sharply on Joan's entrance. Joan slipped the box into her hands.

The nurse raised the lid. "What a fool I've been," she said. "I never thought of that."

She held out a large strong hand and gave Joan a longish grip. "You're right," she said, "we must get her out of this house at once. Forgive me."

Phillips had been called up north and wired that he would not be able to get down till the Wednesday evening. Joan met him at the station.

"She won't be expecting you, just yet," she explained. "We might have a little walk."

She waited till they had reached a quiet road leading to the hills.

"You will find her changed," she said. "Mentally, I mean. Though she will try not to show it. She was dying for your sake--to set you free.

Hilda seems to have had a talk with her and to have spared her no part of the truth. Her great love for you made the sacrifice possible and even welcome. It was the one gift she had in her hands. She was giving it gladly, proudly. So far as she was concerned, it would have been kinder to let her make an end of it. But during the last few days I have come to the conclusion there is a law within us that we may not argue with.

She is coming back to life, knowing you no longer want her, that she is only in the way. Perhaps you may be able to think of something to say or do that will lessen her martyrdom. I can't."

They had paused where a group of trees threw a blot of shadow across the moonlit road.

"You mean she was killing herself?" he asked.

"Quite cleverly. So as to avoid all danger of after discovery: that might have hurt us," she answered.

They walked in silence, and coming to a road that led back into the town, he turned down it. She had the feeling she was following him without his knowing it. A cab was standing outside the gate of a house, having just discharged its fare. He seemed to have suddenly recollected her.

"Do you mind?" he said. "We shall get there so much quicker."

"You go," she said. "I'll stroll on quietly."

"You're sure?" he said.

"I would rather," she answered.

It struck her that he was relieved. He gave the man the address, speaking hurriedly, and jumped in.

She had gone on. She heard the closing of the door behind her, and the next moment the cab pa.s.sed her.

She did not see him again that night. They met in the morning at breakfast. A curious strangeness to each other seemed to have grown up between them, as if they had known one another long ago, and had half forgotten. When they had finished she rose to leave; but he asked her to stop, and, after the table had been cleared, he walked up and down the room, while she sat sideways on the window seat from where she could watch the little ships moving to and fro across the horizon, like painted figures in a show.

"I had a long talk with Nan last night," he said. "And, trying to explain it to her, I came a little nearer to understanding it myself. My love for you would have been strong enough to ruin both of us. I see that now. It would have dominated every other thought in me. It would have swallowed up my dreams. It would have been blind, unscrupulous.

Married to you, I should have aimed only at success. It would not have been your fault. You would not have known. About mere birth I should never have troubled myself. I've met daughters of a hundred earls--more or less: clever, jolly little women I could have chucked under the chin and have been chummy with. Nature creates her own ranks, and puts her ban upon misalliances. Every time I took you in my arms I should have felt that you had stepped down from your proper order to mate yourself with me and that it was up to me to make the sacrifice good to you by giving you power--position. Already within the last few weeks, when it looked as if this thing was going to be possible, I have been thinking against my will of a compromise with Carleton that would give me his support. This coming election was beginning to have terrors for me that I have never before felt. The thought of defeat--having to go back to comparative poverty, to comparative obscurity, with you as my wife, was growing into a nightmare. I should have wanted wealth, fame, victory, for your sake--to see you honoured, courted, envied, finely dressed and finely housed--grateful to me for having won for you these things. It wasn't honest, healthy love--the love that unites, that makes a man willing to take as well as to give, that I felt for you; it was worship that separates a man from a woman, that puts fear between them. It isn't good that man should worship a woman. He can't serve G.o.d and woman.

Their interests are liable to clash. Nan's my helpmate--just a loving woman that the Lord brought to me and gave me when I was alone--that I still love. I didn't know it till last night. She will never stand in my way. I haven't to put her against my duty. She will leave me free to obey the voice that calls to me. And no man can hear that voice but himself."

He had been speaking in a clear, self-confident tone, as if at last he saw his road before him to the end; and felt that nothing else mattered but that he should go forward hopefully, unfalteringly. Now he paused, and his eyes wandered. But the lines about his strong mouth deepened.

"Perhaps, I am not of the stuff that conquerors are made," he went on.

"Perhaps, if I were, I should be thinking differently. It comes to me sometimes that I may be one of those intended only to prepare the way--that for me there may be only the endless struggle. I may have to face unpopularity, abuse, failure. She won't mind."

"Nor would you," he added, turning to her suddenly for the first time, "I know that. But I should be afraid--for you."

She had listened to him without interrupting, and even now she did not speak for a while.

It was hard not to. She wanted to tell him that he was all wrong--at least, so far as she was concerned. It. was not the conqueror she loved in him; it was the fighter. Not in the hour of triumph but in the hour of despair she would have yearned to put her arms about him.

"Unpopularity, abuse, failure," it was against the fear of such that she would have guarded him. Yes, she had dreamed of leadership, influence, command. But it was the leadership of the valiant few against the hosts of the oppressors that she claimed. Wealth, honours! Would she have given up a life of ease, shut herself off from society, if these had been her standards? "_Mesalliance_!" Had the male animal no instinct, telling it when it was loved with all a woman's being, so that any other union would be her degradation.

It was better for him he should think as he did. She rose and held out her hand.

"I will stay with her for a little while," she said. "Till I feel there is no more need. Then I must get back to work."