One day she found it impossible to work; she felt fey, restless.  She wrote a letter to Dr. Angus but tore it up, dissatisfied.  Taking down the little grey book of the Edinburgh lectures, which she had not had the heart to touch, she read the last one again.  Into it she read Kraill’s voice, pictured his gesture, saw how his quick eyes would look friendly, interested, arresting as he talked.  On the last page was a paragraph that someone had marked in pencil.  In the margin was “J.R.K.” written faintly.  She read the paragraph hungrily.  Evidently he had meant it as a message for her.

"One of the greatest of human triumphs is to read the need in another’s eyes and be able to fulfil it.  The difficulty lies in comprehending the need.  Most of us have rich storehouses, but to the man who needs of us a crutch we give dancing shoes:  to him who needs a spur we offer wrappings of cotton-wool. ...  We ask tolerance and sympathy for our failings, patience for our inadequacies ... we give and get only disappointment....  Partly this is because our needs are the things we hide most jealously from each other, partly because we only see needs subjectively ... this is the explanation of most of the sex muddles that tangle life."

As she read Kraill’s message she thought again of her prayer for weakness down by the lake.  As she stood there, with all the lights of her life burning dim, all the virtue gone out of her, it was forced upon her that her prayer was being answered.  She was getting weak!  Never before had she felt despairing about Louis; never before had she felt so dull, so unable to help him, so unable to care that he should be helped.

As this thought came and held her, making her feel that something stronger than herself had taken possession of her and was merely using her as it would, she felt quietened.  She had prayed for the blazing Feet of God to walk along her life to Louis.  Perhaps this dulness, this weariness was their first pressure.

She turned to go out of the room and saw Kraill standing in the sunlight.  He looked tired.

“You’ve come back, then?” she said, and laughed suddenly at the futility of her words.  “It’s a very long way for you to come.”

“I went away for a whole month to think about it,” he said in a low voice.  “And all I can think is that I must take you away.  You’ll have to leave him.”

She shook her head hopelessly.

“I’ve thought that too, very often, when I felt I couldn’t bear it.  But always I have borne it.  And he would die without me.”

“The best thing is for him to die,” he cried harshly.  “In a decent community he would be put in a lethal chamber.  But I’m not thinking of him.  I’m thinking of you.  And I’m thinking of myself.”

He threw his hat on the ground, and turned away from her.

“You’ve got into my imagination,” he began almost indignantly.

“You’ve been in mine years and years,” she said.