ty. He
should pivot himself on his own pride.

"I suppose really I ought to have packed this Aaron off to the hospital.
Instead of which here am I rubbing him with oil to rub the life into
him. And I KNOW he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the moment he
recovers. And Tanny will say 'Quite right, too,' I shouldn't have been
so intimate. No, I should have left it to mechanical doctors and nurses.

"So I should. Everything to its own. And Aaron belongs to this little
system, and Jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and Tanny is waiting
for her own glorification.

"All right, Aaron. Last time I break my bread for anybody, this is. So
get better, my flautist, so that I can go away.

"It was easy for the Red Indians and the Others to take their hook into
death. They might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy the white
masses.

"I'll make some tea--"

Lilly rose softly and went across to the fire. He had to cross a landing
to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for water. The
clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and nodded. He nodded,
and disappeared from their sight as quickly as possible, with his
kettle. His dark eyes were quick, his dark hair was untidy, there was
something silent and withheld about him. People could never approach him
quite ordinarily.

He put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray. The
room was clean and cosy and pleasant. He did the cleaning himself, and
was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman. While the
kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off Aaron's
feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed. He preferred
that no outsider should see him doing these things. Yet he preferred
also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside
aid.

His face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the
London afternoon darning the black woollen socks. His full brow was
knitted slightly, there was a tension. At the same time, there was an
indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about him.
His hands, though small, were not very thin. He bit off the wool as he
finished his darn.

As he was making the tea he saw Aaron rouse up in bed.

"I've been to sleep. I feel better," said the patient, turning round to
look what the other man was doing. And the sight of the water steaming
in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive.

"Yes," said Lilly. "You've slept