Mr. Reffold laughed.

“Poor Winifred,” he said.  “If it is ever your lot to fall ill and be neglected, perhaps then you will think of me.”

“Neglected?” she said, in some surprise.  “What do you mean?  I thought you had everything you wanted.  The nurse brought excellent testimonials.  I was careful in the choice of her.  You have never complained before.”

He turned wearily on his side, and made no answer.  And for some time there was silence between them.

Then he watched her as she bent over her embroidery.

“You are very beautiful, Winifred,” he said quietly, “but you are a selfish woman.  Has it ever struck you that you are selfish?”

Mrs. Reffold gave no reply, but she made a resolution to write to her particular friend at Cannes and confide to her how very trying her husband had become.

“I suppose it is part of his illness,” she thought meekly.  “But it is hard to have to bear it.”

And Mrs. Reffold pitied herself profoundly.  She stitched sincere pity for herself into that piece of embroidery.

“I remember you telling me,” continued Mr. Reffold, “that sick people repelled you.  That was when I was strong and vigorous.  But since I have been ill, I have often recalled your words.  Poor Winifred!  You did not think then that you would have an invalid husband on your hands.  Well, you were not intended for sick-room nursing, and you have not tried to be what you were not intended for.  Perhaps you were right, after all.”

“I don’t know why you should be so unkind to-day,” Mrs. Reffold said, with pathetic patience.  “I can’t understand you.  You have never spoken like this before.”

“No,” he said; “but I have thought like this before.  All the hours you have left me lonely, I have been thinking like this, with my heart full of bitterness against you, until that little girl, that Little Brick came along.”

After that, it was some time before he spoke.  He was thinking of his Little Brick, and of all the pleasant hours he had spent with her, and of the kind, wise words she had spoken to him, an ignorant fellow.  She was something like a companion.

So he went on thinking, and Mrs. Reffold went on embroidering.  She was now feeling herself to be almost a heroine.  It is a very easy matter to make oneself into a heroine or a martyr.  Selfish, neglectful?  What did he mean?  Oh, it was just part of his illness.  She must go on bearing her burden as she had borne it these many months.  Her rightful position was in a London ball-room.  Instead of which, she had to be shut up in an Alpine village:  a hard lot.  It was little enough pleasure she could get, and apparently her husband grudged her that.  His manner to her this afternoon was not such as to encourage her to stay in from her drive on another occasion.  To-morrow she would go sledging.

That flash of light which reveals ourselves to ourselves had not yet come to Mrs. Reffold.