‘And I am to lose my Nesta for a month?’ Nataly said, after catching here and there at the fitful gleams of truce or comfort dropped from his words.  And simultaneously, the reproach of her mind to her nature for again and so constantly yielding to the domination of his initiative:  unable to find the words, even the ideas, to withstand him,—­brought big tears.  Angry at herself both for the internal feebleness and the exhibition of it, she blinked and begged excuse.  There might be nothing that should call her to resist him.  She could not do much worse than she had done to-day.  The reflection, that to-day she had been actually sustained by the expectation of a death to come, diminished her estimate of to-morrow’s burden on her endurance, in making her seem a less criminal woman, who would have no such expectation:  which was virtually a stab at a fellow creature’s future.  Her head was acute to work in the direction of the casuistries and the sensational webs and films.  Facing Victor, it was a block.

But the thought came:  how could she meet those people about Lakelands, without support of the recent guilty whispers!  She said coldly, her heart shaking her:  ‘You think there has been a recovery?’

’Invalids are up and down.  They are—­well, no; I should think she dreads the . . .’ he kept ‘surgeon’ out of hearing.  ’Or else she means this for the final stroke:  “though I’m lying here, I can still make him feel.”  That, or—­poor woman—­she has her notions of right and wrong.’

‘Could we not now travel for a few weeks, Victor?’

’Certainly, dear; we will, after we have kept our engagements to dine—­I accepted—­with the Blathenoys, the Blachingtons, Beaver Urmsing.’

Nataly’s vision of the peaceful lost little dairy cottage swelled to brilliance, like the large tear at the fall; darkening under her present effort to comprehend the necessity it was for him to mix and be foremost with the world.  Unable to grasp it perfectly in mind, her compassionate love embraced it:  she blamed herself, for being the obstruction to him.

‘Very well,’ she said on a sigh.  ’Then we shall not have to let our girl go from us?’

’Just a few weeks.  In the middle of dinner, I scribbled a telegram to the Duvidneys, for Skepsey to take.’

‘Speaking of Nesta?’

’Of my coming to-morrow.  They won’t stop me.  I dine with them, sleep at the Wells; hotel for a night.  We are to be separated for a night.’

She laid her hand in his and gave him a passing view of her face:  ’For two, dear.  I am . . . that man’s visit—­rather shaken:  I shall have a better chance of sleeping if I know I am not disturbing you.’

She was firm; and they kissed and parted.  Each had an unphrased speculation upon the power of Mrs. Burman to put division between them.

CHAPTER XXIII

Treats of the ladies’ lapdog Tasso for an instance of momentous effects produced by very minor causes