“She is very ill,” he said in answer to Ridley’s question.  All the annoyance had by this time left his manner, he was grave and formal, but at the same time it was full of consideration, which had not marked it before.  He went upstairs again.  The three men sat together in the drawing-room.  Ridley was quite quiet now, and his attention seemed to be thoroughly awakened.  Save for little half-voluntary movements and exclamations that were stifled at once, they waited in complete silence.  It seemed as if they were at last brought together face to face with something definite.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Dr. Lesage again appeared in the room.  He approached them very slowly, and did not speak at once.  He looked first at St. John and then at Terence, and said to Terence, “Mr. Hewet, I think you should go upstairs now.”

Terence rose immediately, leaving the others seated with Dr. Lesage standing motionless between them.

Chailey was in the passage outside, repeating over and over again, “It’s wicked—­it’s wicked.”

Terence paid her no attention; he heard what she was saying, but it conveyed no meaning to his mind.  All the way upstairs he kept saying to himself, “This has not happened to me.  It is not possible that this has happened to me.”

He looked curiously at his own hand on the banisters.  The stairs were very steep, and it seemed to take him a long time to surmount them.  Instead of feeling keenly, as he knew that he ought to feel, he felt nothing at all.  When he opened the door he saw Helen sitting by the bedside.  There were shaded lights on the table, and the room, though it seemed to be full of a great many things, was very tidy.  There was a faint and not unpleasant smell of disinfectants.  Helen rose and gave up her chair to him in silence.  As they passed each other their eyes met in a peculiar level glance, he wondered at the extraordinary clearness of his eyes, and at the deep calm and sadness that dwelt in them.  He sat down by the bedside, and a moment afterwards heard the door shut gently behind her.  He was alone with Rachel, and a faint reflection of the sense of relief that they used to feel when they were left alone possessed him.  He looked at her.  He expected to find some terrible change in her, but there was none.  She looked indeed very thin, and, as far as he could see, very tired, but she was the same as she had always been.  Moreover, she saw him and knew him.  She smiled at him and said, “Hullo, Terence.”

The curtain which had been drawn between them for so long vanished immediately.

“Well, Rachel,” he replied in his usual voice, upon which she opened her eyes quite widely and smiled with her familiar smile.  He kissed her and took her hand.

“It’s been wretched without you,” he said.

She still looked at him and smiled, but soon a slight look of fatigue or perplexity came into her eyes and she shut them again.