nto tears.

"Oh, Anne, don't cry. Don't cry, Anne darling."

He put his arm round her. He laid his hand on her hair and stroked it.
He stooped suddenly and kissed her face; gently, quietly, because of the
dead thing in her lap.

It was as if he had kissed her for the first time.

For one instant she had her arm round his neck and clung to him, hiding
her face on his shoulder. Then suddenly she loosed herself and stood up
before him, holding out the body of the little cat.

"Take him away, please, Jerry, so that I don't see him."

He took him away.

All day the sense of kissing her remained with him, and all night, with
the scent of her hair, the sweet rose-scent of her flesh, the touch of
her smooth rose-leaf skin. That was Anne, that strangeness, that beauty
of the clear, cold dawn, that scent, that warm sweet smoothness, that
clinging of passionate arms. And he had kissed her gently, quietly, as
you kiss a child, as you kiss a young, small animal.

He wanted to kiss her close, pressing down on her mouth, deep into her
sweet flesh; to hold her body tight, tight, crushed in his arms. If it
hadn't been for Nicky that was the way he would have kissed her.

To-morrow, to-morrow, he would kiss Anne that way.

IV

ROBERT

i

But when to-morrow came he did not kiss her. He was annoyed with Anne
because she insisted on taking a gloomy view of his father's illness.

The doctors couldn't agree about it. Dr. Ransome of Wyck said it was
gastritis. Dr. Harper of Cheltenham said it was colitis. He had had that
before and had got better. Now he was getting worse, fast. For the last
three days he couldn't keep down his chicken and fish. Yesterday not
even his milk. To-day, not even his ice-water. Then they both said it
was acute gastritis.

"He's never been like this before, Jerrold."

"No. But that doesn't mean he isn't going to get better. People with
acute gastritis do get better. It's enough to make him die, everybody
insisting that he's going to. And it's rot sending for Eliot."

That was what Anne had done.

Eliot had written to her from London:
10 Welbeck St., _Sept. 35th, 1910._

My dear Anne:

I wish you'd tell me how Father really is. Nobody but you has
any intelligence that matters. Between Mother's wails and
Jerrold's optimism I don't seem to be getting the truth. If it's
serious I'll come down at once.

Always yours,

Eliot.

And Anne had answered: