He led the animal towards the water.  The old horse followed tranquilly enough, but as he had done nothing to deserve his misfortune, neither did he feel any gratitude towards his deliverer.  He drank his fill, and fell to grazing.  The Rector experienced a sense of disillusionment, and drove the peg again into the softer earth under the willows; then raising himself, he looked hard at the old horse.

The animal continued to graze.  The Rector took out his handkerchief, wiped the perspiration from his brow, and frowned.  He hated ingratitude in man or beast.

Suddenly he realised that he was very tired.

“It must be over by now,” he said to himself, and hastened on in the heat across the fields.

The Rectory door was open.  Passing into the study, he sat down a moment to collect his thoughts.  People were moving above; he heard a long moaning sound that filled his heart with terror.

He got up and rushed to the bell, but did not ring it, and ran upstairs instead.  Outside his wife’s room he met his children’s old nurse.  She was standing on the mat, with her hands to her ears, and the tears were rolling down her face.

“Oh, sir!” she said—­“oh, sir!”

The Rector glared.

“Woman!” he cried—­“woman!”

He covered his ears and rushed downstairs again.  There was a lady in the hall.  It was Mrs. Pendyce, and he ran to her, as a hurt child runs to its mother.

“My wife,” he said—­“my poor wife!  God knows what they’re doing to her up there, Mrs. Pendyce!” and he hid his face in his hands.

She, who had been a Totteridge, stood motionless; then, very gently putting her gloved hand on his thick arm, where the muscles stood out from the clenching of his hands, she said: 

“Dear Mr. Barter, Dr. Wilson is so clever!  Come into the drawing-room!”

The Rector, stumbling like a blind man, suffered himself to be led.  He sat down on the sofa, and Mrs. Pendyce sat down beside him, her hand still on his arm; over her face passed little quivers, as though she were holding herself in.  She repeated in her gentle voice: 

“It will be all right—­it will be all right.  Come, come!”

In her concern and sympathy there was apparent, not aloofness, but a faint surprise that she should be sitting there stroking the Rector’s arm.

Mr. Barter took his hands from before his face.

“If she dies,” he said in a voice unlike his own, “I’ll not bear it.”

In answer to those words, forced from him by that which is deeper than habit, Mrs. Pendyce’s hand slipped from his arm and rested on the shiny chintz covering of the sofa, patterned with green and crimson.  Her soul shrank from the violence in his voice.

“Wait here,” she said.  “I will go up and see.”

To command was foreign to her nature, but Mr. Barter, with a look such as a little rueful boy might give, obeyed.