n the spring sunshine," said Lilly. "I wish I
were in the country, don't you? As soon as you are better we'll go. It's
been a terrible cold, wet spring. But now it's going to be nice. Do you
like being in the country?"

"Yes," said Aaron.

He was thinking of his garden. He loved it. Never in his life had he
been away from a garden before.

"Make haste and get better, and we'll go."

"Where?" said Aaron.

"Hampshire. Or Berkshire. Or perhaps you'd like to go home? Would you?"

Aaron lay still, and did not answer.

"Perhaps you want to, and you don't want to," said Lilly. "You can
please yourself, anyhow."

There was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul
seemed stuck, as if it would not move.

Suddenly Lilly rose and went to the dressing-table.

"I'm going to rub you with oil," he said. "I'm going to rub you as
mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work."

Aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face of
the little man.

"What's the good of that?" he said irritably. "I'd rather be left
alone."

"Then you won't be."

Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to
rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion,
a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then
went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of
incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the abdomen,
the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all
warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes
swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. Then Aaron was covered up again,
and Lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient.

He saw a change. The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the
faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face. Aaron was
regaining himself. But Lilly said nothing. He watched his patient fall
into a proper sleep.

And he sat and watched him sleep. And he thought to himself: "I wonder
why I do it. I wonder why I bother with him.... Jim ought to have taught
me my lesson. As soon as this man's really better he'll punch me in the
wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered with him.
And Tanny would say, he was quite right to do it. She says I want power
over them. What if I do? They don't care how much power the mob has over
them, the nation, Lloyd George and Northcliffe and the police and money.
They'll