“I thought you were going to Paris?” she said.

“I’m not.  I’m here.”

She sat up and laid her hands about him, feeling his shoulders and his sleeves.

“How wet your coat is.”

He kissed her and she held her face against his that was cold with the wind and rain; she took his hands and tried to warm them in her own, piteously forgetful of herself, as if it were he, not she, who needed tenderness.

“Lucy—­are you very ill, darling?”

“No.  I am very, very well.”

He thought it was one of those things that people say when they mean that death is well.  He gathered her to him as if he could hold her back from death.  She looked smiling into his face.

“Keith,” she said, “you didn’t have a mackintosh.  You must go away at once to Robert and get dry.”

“Not now, Lucy.  Let me stay.”

“How long can you stay?”

“As long as ever you’ll let me.”

“Till you go to Italy?”

“Very well.  Till I go to Italy.”

“When are you going?”

“Not till you’re well enough to go with me.”

“How did you know I was ill?”

“Because I saw that Kitty had had to finish what your dear little hands had begun.”

“Ah—­you should have had them sooner—­”

“Why should I have had them at all?  Do you think I would have published them before I knew I had dedicated them to my wife?”

“Keith—­dear—­you mustn’t talk about that yet.”

She hid her face on his shoulder; he lifted it and looked at it as if it could have told him what he had to know.  It told him nothing; it had not changed enough for that.  It was like a beautiful picture blurred, and the sweeter for the blurring.

He laid his hand over her heart.  At his touch it leapt and throbbed violently, suggesting a new terror.

“Darling, how fast your heart beats.  Am I doing it harm?”

“No, it doesn’t mind.”

“But am I tiring it?”

“No, no, you’re resting it.”

She lay still a long time without speaking, till at last he carried her upstairs and delivered her into Kitty’s care.  At the open door of her room he saw a nurse in uniform standing ready to receive her.  Her presence there was ominous of the unutterable things he feared.

“Kitty,” said Lucia, when they were alone.  “It looks as if I had been shamming after all.  What do you think of me?”

“I think perhaps Sir Wilfrid Spence needn’t come down to-morrow.”

“Perhaps not.  And yet it would be better to know.  If there really is anything wrong I couldn’t let him marry me.  It would be awful.  I want to be sure, Kitty, for his sake.”

Kitty felt sure enough; and her certainty grew when Lucia came down the next morning.  But she was unable to impart her certainty to Keith.  The most he could do was to hide his anxiety from Lucia.  It wanted but a day to the coming of the great specialist; and for that day they made such a brave show of happiness that they deceived both Kitty and themselves.  Kitty, firm in her conviction, left them to themselves that afternoon while she went into Harmouth to announce to Lucia’s doctor the miracle of her recovery.