for the aspirin. She took two
tabloids and a sip of water, was covered up and left to herself. Emily
tiptoed away, full of interest in the affair.

The shivering fit lasted the better part of an hour. Lucy crouched and
suffered, open-eyed but without any consciousness. Something had
happened, was happening still; a storm was raging overhead; she lay
quaking and waited for it to pass. She fell asleep, slept profoundly,
and awoke slowly to a sense of things. She had no doubt of what lay
immediately before her. Disrelish of the Norwegian expedition was
now a reasonable thing. Either it must be given up, or the disaster
reckoned with. _Advienne que pourra._ But in either case she must
"have it out" with James. What did that mean? Jimmy Urquhart would be
thrown over. He would go--and she would not. She lay, picturing rather
than reasoning; saw him superbly capable, directing everything. She
felt a pride in him, and in herself for discovering how fine he was.
His fineness, indeed, was a thing shared. She felt a sinking of the
heart to know that she could not be there. But the mere thought of
that sickened her. Out of the question.

She must "have it out" with James. That might be rather dreadful; it
might take her where she must refuse to go--but on the whole, she
didn't think it need. The certainty that she couldn't go to Norway,
that James must be made to see it, was a moral buttress. Timidity of
James would not prevail against it. Besides that, deeply within
herself, lay the conviction that James was kind if you took him the
right way. He was irritable, and very annoying when he was sarcastic;
but he was good at heart. And it was odd, she thought, that directly
she got into an awkward place with a flirtation, her first impulse was
to go to James to get her out. In her dream she had called to him,
though Urquhart had been there. Why was that?

She was thinking now like a child, which indeed she was where such
matters were concerned. She was not really contrite for what she had
done, neither regretted that she had done it, nor that it was done
with. She wanted to discharge her bosom of perilous stuff. James would
forgive her. He must not know, of course, what he was forgiving;
but--yes, he would forgive her.

* * * * *

At six or thereabouts, listening for it, she heard the motor bring
James home; she heard his latch-key, and the shutting of the door
behind him. Her heart beat high, but s