olen was in if he would like to see her.

He waited in the crowded shabby gray and amber drawing-room with the
Erard in the corner, and it was there that she came to him.

He said he had only called to ask after her sister, as he had heard in
the village that she was not so well.

"I'm afraid she isn't."

"May I see her? I don't mean professionally--just for a talk."

The formula came easily. He had used it hundreds of times in the
houses of parsons and of clerks and of little shopkeepers, to whom
bills were nightmares.

She took him upstairs.

On the landing she turned to him.

"She doesn't _look_ worse. She looks better."

"All right. She won't deceive me."

She did look better, better than he could have believed. There was a
faint opaline dawn of color in her face.

Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a
quarter of an hour he kept it up.

And when he rose to go he said, "You're not worse. You're better.
You'll be perfectly well if you'll only get up and go out. Why waste
all this glorious air?"

"If I could live on air!" said Alice.

"You can--you do to a very large extent. You certainly can't live
without it."

Downstairs he lingered. But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered
him. He said he hadn't time. Patients were waiting for him.

"But I'll look in next Wednesday, if I may."

"At teatime?"

"Very well--at teatime."

* * * * *

"How's Alice?" said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.

"She's better."

"Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?"

"He called--on you, I think."

(Rowcliffe's cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving
plainly that his visit was not professional.)

"And you made him see her?" he insisted.

"He saw her."

"Well?"

"He says she's all right. She'll be well if only she'll go out in the
open air."

"It's what I've been dinning into her for the last three months. She
doesn't want a doctor to tell her that."

He drew her into the study and closed the door. He was not angry. He
had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.

"Look here, Gwenda," he said gravely. "I know what I'm doing. There's
nothing in the world the matter with her. But she'll never be well as
long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe."

But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed. She knew what it
meant--that air of wisdom and of patience.

Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.

"I w