there--"

"Nothing will make me go! How can you ask it?"

Helen longed to strike her. "Then I shall go, and you must stay with
Notya," she said and, half-dressed, Miriam was hurried down the stairs.
"And if you dare to leave her--!"

"I won't leave her," Miriam moaned, and sat with averted face.

Thus it was that George Halkett had his wish as the sun cleared blue
mist from the larches, but Helen did not come stealing, shy and
virginal, as he had pictured her; she bounded towards him like a hunted
thing and stood and panted, struggling for her words.

He steadied himself against attack. No persuasion and no abuse would
make him let her go. The road he had trodden in the night knew his great
need of her and now she caught his senses, for her eyes had darkened,
colour was in her cheeks, and she glowed as woman where she had shone as
saint.

She did not see his offered hands. "It's Notya, again, George, please."
She had a glimpse of Mrs. Biggs peering between window curtains, and her
tongue tripped over the next words. "S-so will you--can you be very
quick?"

"The doctor?"

"Yes. Dr. Mackenzie is away, but there's another there, and he must
come."

He nodded, and he did not see her go, for he was in the stable
harnessing the horse and shouting to a man to get the cart.

"You've got to drive to town like hell, William, and the sooner you
bring the doctor the better for you."

"I'll have to change my clothes."

"You'll go as you are, God damn you, and you'll go now."

He waited until the cart was bowling towards the road before he followed
Helen so swiftly that he saw her dress whisk through the garden door. He
used no ceremony and he found her in the kitchen, where Miriam was
sitting stiffly on a chair, her feet on one of its rungs, her neck and
shoulders cream-coloured above the whiteness of her under-linen. He
hardly looked at her and he did not know whether she went or stayed. He
spoke to Helen:

"Do you want me to carry her upstairs? William's gone to town. I've come
to help you."

"Then you've spoilt the game, George. It's always you who go to town and
bring the doctor. Never mind. Yes. Carry her up. Don't step on the
rolling-pin." She looked at it again. "She's not dead, is she?"

"No."

"What is it, then?"

He stooped to lift the heavy burden, and she heard him say a word
mumblingly, as though ashamed of it.

She moved about the room, crying, "A stroke! It's ugly. It's horrid. A
stroke! Why