t
know what Leonora put up as an excuse--something, I fancy, in the nature
of a nightly orison that she made the girl and herself perform for the
soul of Florence. And then, one evening, about a fortnight later, when
the girl, growing restive at even devotional exercises, clamoured once
more to be allowed to go for a walk with Edward, and when Leonora was
really at her wits' end, Edward gave himself into her hands. He was just
standing up from dinner and had his face averted.

But he turned his heavy head and his bloodshot eyes upon his wife and
looked full at her.

"Doctor von Hauptmann," he said, "has ordered me to go to bed
immediately after dinner. My heart's much worse."

He continued to look at Leonora for a long minute--with a sort of heavy
contempt. And Leonora understood that, with his speech, he was giving
her the excuse that she needed for separating him from the girl, and
with his eyes he was reproaching her for thinking that he would try to
corrupt Nancy.

He went silently up to his room and sat there for a long time--until
the girl was well in bed--reading in the Anglican prayer-book. And about
half-past ten she heard his footsteps pass her door, going outwards. Two
and a half hours later they came back, stumbling heavily.

She remained, reflecting upon this position until the last night of
their stay at Nauheim. Then she suddenly acted. For, just in the same
way, suddenly after dinner, she looked at him and said:

"Teddy, don't you think you could take a night off from your doctor's
orders and go with Nancy to the Casino. The poor child has had her visit
so spoiled."

He looked at her in turn for a long, balancing minute.

"Why, yes," he said at last.

Nancy jumped out of her chair and kissed him. Those two words, Leonora
said, gave her the greatest relief of any two syllables she had ever
heard in her life. For she realized that Edward was breaking up, not
under the desire for possession, but from the dogged determination to
hold his hand. She could relax some of her vigilance.

Nevertheless, she sat in the darkness behind her half-closed jalousies,
looking over the street and the night and the trees until, very late,
she could hear Nancy's clear voice coming closer and saying:

"You did look an old guy with that false nose." There had been some sort
of celebration of a local holiday up in the Kursaal. And Edward replied
with his sort of sulky good nature:

"As for you, you looked like old