old, dusty sunlight poured into
the room.

Louise gave a cry, and put her hands to her eyes.

"The room is so close, and you're so pale," he said in selfexcuse. "Do
you know you've been shut up in here for three days now?"

"My head aches."

"It will never be any better as long as you lie there. Dearest, what is
it? WHAT'S the matter with you?"

"You're unhappy about something," he went on, a moment later. "What is
it? Won't you tell me?"

"Nothing," she murmured. She lay and pressed her palms to her eyeballs,
so firmly that when she removed them, the room was a blur. Maurice,
standing at the window, beat a tattoo on the pane. Then, with his back
to her, he began to speak. He blamed himself for what he called the
folly of the past weeks. "I gave way when I should have been firm. And
this is the result. You have got into a nervous, morbid state. But it's
nonsense to think it can go on."

For the first time, she was conscious of a somewhat critical attitude
on his part; he said "folly" and "nonsense." But she made no comment;
she lay and let his words go over her. They had so little import now.
All the words that had ever been said could not alter a jot of what she
felt--of her intense inward experience.

Her protracted silence, her heavy indifference infected him; and for
some time the only sound to be heard was that of his fingers drumming
on the glass. When he spoke again, he seemed to be concluding an
argument with himself; and indeed, on this particular day, Maurice
found it hard to detach his thoughts from himself, for any length of
time.

"It's no use, dear. Things can't go on like this any longer. I've got
to buckle down to work again. I've ... I...I haven't told you yet:
Schwarz is letting me play the Mendelssohn."

She thought she would have to cry aloud; here it was again: the
chilling atmosphere of commonplace, which her nerves were expected to
live and be well in; the well-worn phrases, the "must this," and "must
that," the confident expectation of interest in doings that did not
interest her at all. She could not--it would kill her to begin it anew!
And, in spite of her efforts at repression, an exclamation forced its
way through her lips.

At this, Maurice went quickly back to her.

"Forgive me ... talking about myself, when you are not well."

He knelt down beside the bed, and removed her hands from her face. She
did not open her eyes, kept quite still. At this moment, she felt
mainly cur