ar for Ransome. Then
he'll have to go on to Cheltenham to fetch Colin."

"Colin?" This was the end then.

"Yes. He'd better come. And I want you to do something. I want you to
drive over to Medlicote and bring Jerrold back. It's beastly for you.
But you'll do it, won't you?"

"I'll do anything."

It was the beastliest thing she had ever had to do, but she did it.

From where she drew up in the drive at Medlicote she could see the
tennis courts. She could see Jerrold playing in the men's singles. He
stood up to the net, smashing down the ball at the volley; his back was
turned to her as he stood.

She heard him shout. She heard him laugh. She saw him turn to come up
the court, facing her.

And when he saw her, he knew.

ii

He had waited ten minutes in the gallery outside his father's room.
Eliot had asked Anne to go in and help him while Jerrold stood by the
door to keep his mother out. She was no good, Eliot said. She lost her
head just when he wanted her to do things. You could have heard her all
over the house crying out that she couldn't bear it.

She opened her door and looked out. When she saw Jerrold she came to
him, slowly, supporting herself by the gallery rail. Her eyes were sore
with crying and there was a flushed thickening about the edges of her
mouth.

"So you've come back," she said. "You might go in and tell me how he
is."

"Haven't you seen him?"

"Of course I've seen him. But I'm afraid, Jerrold. It was awful, awful,
the haemorrhage. You can't think how awful. I daren't go in and see it
again. I shouldn't be a bit of good if I did. I should only faint, or be
ill or something. I simply can not bear it."

"You mustn't go in," he said.

"Who's with him?"

"Eliot and Anne."

"Anne?"

"Yes."

"Jerrold, to think that Anne should be with him and me not."

"Well, she'll be all right. She can stand things."

"It's all very well for Anne. He isn't _her_ husband."

"You'd better go away, Mother."

"Not before you tell me how he is. Go in, Jerrold."

He knocked and went in.

His father was sitting up in his white, slender bed, raised on Eliot's
arm. He saw his face, strained and smoothed with exhaustion, sallow
white against the pillows, the back-drawn-mouth, the sharp, peaked nose,
the iron grey hair, pointed with sweat, sticking to the forehead. A face
of piteous, tired patience, waiting. He saw Eliot's face, close, close
beside it by the edge of the pillow, grave and sombre