arid journey.

"No, it is nothing. I don't want to make things more overwhelming than
they are. Only, it is, I think, simply that during these last days when
mother and Rupert have both been ill, I have been overwhelmed."

"Rupert?"

"Yes, we'll come to him in a moment. You must remember," she smiled up
at him as she said it, "that I'm not the least the kind of person who
makes the best of things--in fact I'm not a useful person at all. I
suppose being abroad so long with my music spoiled me, but whatever it
is I seem unable to wrestle with things. They frighten me, overwhelm me,
as I say . . . I'm frightened now."

He looked up at her last word and caught a corner reflection in the old
gilt mirror--a reflection of a multitude of little things; silver boxes,
photograph frames, old china pots, little silk squares, lying like
scattered treasures from a wreck on a dark sea.

"What are you frightened about?"

"Well, there it is--nothing I suppose. Only I'm not good at managing
sick people, especially when there's nothing definitely the matter with
them. It's a case with all three of us--a case of nerves."

"Well, that's as serious a thing as any other disease."

"Yes, but I don't know what to do with it. Mother lies there all day.
She seldom speaks, she scarcely eats anything. She entirely refuses to
have a doctor. But worse than that is the extraordinary feeling that
she has had during this last week about Rupert. She refuses to see him,"
Margaret Craven finally brought out.

"Refuses?"

"Yes, she says that he is altered to her. She says that he will not let
her alone, that he is imagining things. Poor Rupert is most terribly
distressed. He is imagining nothing. He would do anything for her, he is
devoted to her."

"Since when has she had this idea?"

"You remember the day that you came last? when Rupert came in and had
found your matchbox. It began about then. . . . Of course Rupert has
not been well--he has never been well since that dreadful death of Mr.
Carfax, and certainly since that day when you were here I think that
he's been worse--strange, utterly unlike himself, sleeping badly, eating
nothing. Poor, poor Rupert, I would do anything for him, for them
both, but I am so utterly, utterly useless, What can I do?" she finally
appealed to him.

"You said once," he answered her slowly, "that I could help you. If you
still feel that, tell me, and I will do anything, anything. You know
that I will do any