He couldn’t help it if his problem was taken out of his hands.

They started.  They looked at each other and smiled their strained and tragic smile.

In the inner room the Vicar was calling for Gwenda.

It was prayer time, he said.

* * * * *

Rowcliffe had to drive Alice back that night to Upthorne.

“Well,” he said, as they left the Vicarage behind them, “you see he isn’t going to die.”

“No,” said Alice.  “But he’s out of his mind.  I haven’t killed him.  I’ve done worse.  I’ve driven him mad.”

And she stuck to it.  She couldn’t afford to part with her fear—­yet.

Rowcliffe was distressed at the failure of his experiment.  He told Greatorex that there was nothing to be done but to wait patiently till June.  Then—­perhaps—­they would see.

In his own mind he had very little hope.  He said to himself that he didn’t like the turn Ally’s obsession had taken.  It was too morbid.

But when May came Alice lay in the big bed under the sagging ceiling with a lamentably small baby in her arms, and Greatorex sat beside her by the hour together, with his eyes fixed on her white face.  Rowcliffe had told him to be on the lookout for some new thing or for some more violent sign of the old obsession.  But nine days had passed and he had seen no sign.  Her eyes looked at him and at her child with the same lucid, drowsy ecstasy.

And in nine days she had only asked him once if he knew how poor Papa was?

Her fear had left her.  It had served its purpose.

LI

There was no prayer time at the Vicarage any more.

* * * * *

There was no more time at all there as the world counts time.

The hours no longer passed in a procession marked by distinguishable days.  They rolled round and round in an interminable circle, monotonously renewed, monotonously returning upon itself.  The Vicar was the center of the circle.  The hours were sounded and measured by his monotonously recurring needs.  But the days were neither measured nor marked.  They were all of one shade.  There was no difference between Sunday and Monday in the Vicarage now.  They talked of the Vicar’s good days and his bad days, that was all.

For in this house where time had ceased they talked incessantly of time.  But it was always his time; the time for his early morning cup of tea; the time for his medicine; the time for his breakfast; the time for reading his chapter to him while he dozed; the time for washing him, for dressing him, for taking him out (he went out now, in a wheel-chair drawn by Peacock’s pony); the time for his medicine again; his dinner time; the time for his afternoon sleep; his tea-time; the time for his last dose of medicine; his supper time and his time for being undressed and put to bed.  And there were several times during the night which were his times also.