For one instant she had her arm round his neck and clung to him, hiding her face on his shoulder.  Then suddenly she loosed herself and stood up before him, holding out the body of the little cat.

“Take him away, please, Jerry, so that I don’t see him.”

He took him away.

All day the sense of kissing her remained with him, and all night, with the scent of her hair, the sweet rose-scent of her flesh, the touch of her smooth rose-leaf skin.  That was Anne, that strangeness, that beauty of the clear, cold dawn, that scent, that warm sweet smoothness, that clinging of passionate arms.  And he had kissed her gently, quietly, as you kiss a child, as you kiss a young, small animal.

He wanted to kiss her close, pressing down on her mouth, deep into her sweet flesh; to hold her body tight, tight, crushed in his arms.  If it hadn’t been for Nicky that was the way he would have kissed her.

To-morrow, to-morrow, he would kiss Anne that way.

IV

ROBERT

i

But when to-morrow came he did not kiss her.  He was annoyed with Anne because she insisted on taking a gloomy view of his father’s illness.

The doctors couldn’t agree about it.  Dr. Ransome of Wyck said it was gastritis.  Dr. Harper of Cheltenham said it was colitis.  He had had that before and had got better.  Now he was getting worse, fast.  For the last three days he couldn’t keep down his chicken and fish.  Yesterday not even his milk.  To-day, not even his ice-water.  Then they both said it was acute gastritis.

“He’s never been like this before, Jerrold.”

“No.  But that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to get better.  People with acute gastritis do get better.  It’s enough to make him die, everybody insisting that he’s going to.  And it’s rot sending for Eliot.”

That was what Anne had done.

Eliot had written to her from London: 
    10 Welbeck St., Sept. 35th, 1910.

    My dear Anne: 

I wish you’d tell me how Father really is.  Nobody but you has any intelligence that matters.  Between Mother’s wails and Jerrold’s optimism I don’t seem to be getting the truth.  If it’s serious I’ll come down at once.

    Always yours,

    Eliot.

And Anne had answered: 

    My dear Eliot,

It is serious.  Dr. Ransome and Dr. Harper say so.  They think now it’s acute gastritis.  I wish you’d come down.  Jerrold is heart-breaking.  He won’t see it; because he couldn’t bear it if he did.  I know Auntie wants you.

    Always very affectionately yours,

    Anne.

She addressed the letter to Dr. Eliot Fielding, for Eliot had taken his degree.

And on that to-morrow of Jerrold’s Eliot had come.  Jerrold told him he was a perfect idiot, rushing down like that, as if Daddy hadn’t an hour to live.