with what she conceived to be the visitor’s undue stay, she would rap on the doors, to summon Julian to her.  This rapping would take place sometimes six or seven times in half an hour, till Waymark hastened away in annoyance.  And indeed there was little possibility of conversing in Julian’s own room.  Julian sat for ever in a state of nervous apprehension, dreading the summons which was sure to come before long.  When he left the room for a moment, in obedience to it, Waymark could hear Harriet’s voice speaking in a peevish or ill-tempered tone, and Julian would return pale with agitation, unable to utter consecutive words.  It was a little better when the meeting was at Waymark’s, but even then Julian was anything but at his ease.  He would often sit for a long time in gloomy silence, and seldom could even affect his old cheerfulness.  The change which a year had made in him was painful.  His face was growing haggard with ceaseless anxiety.  The slightest unexpected noise made him start nervously.  His old enthusiasms were dying away.  His daily work was a burden which grew more and more oppressive.  He always seemed weary, alike in body and mind.

Harriet’s ailments were not of that unreal kind which hysterical women often affect, for the mere sake of demanding sympathy, though it was certain she made the most of them.  The scrofulous taint in her constitution was declaring itself in many ways.  The most serious symptoms took the form of convulsive fits.  On Julian’s return home one evening, he had found her stretched upon the floor, unconscious, foaming at the mouth, and struggling horribly.  Since then, he had come back every night in agonies of miserable anticipation.  Her illness, and his own miseries, were of course much intensified by her self-willed habits.  When she remained away from home till after midnight, Julian was always in fear lest some accident had happened to her, and once or twice of late she had declared (whether truly or not it was impossible to say) that she had had fits in the open street.  Weather made no difference to her; she would leave home on the pretence of making necessary purchases, and would come back drenched with rain.  Protest availed nothing, save to irritate her.  At times her conduct was so utterly unreasonable that Julian looked at her as if to see whether she had lost her senses.  And all this he bore with a patience which few could have rivalled.  Moments there were when she softened, and, in a burst of hysterical weeping, begged him to forgive her for some unusual violence, pleading her illness as the cause; and so sensible was he to compassion, that he always vowed in his mind to bear anything rather than deal harshly with her.  Love for her, in the true sense, he had never felt, but his pity often led him to effusions of tenderness which love could scarcely have exceeded.  He was giving up everything for her.  Through whole evenings he would sit by her, as she lay in pain, holding her hands, and talking in a way which he thought would amuse or interest her.