d
encouraged, with their attendant noise and nonsense, considered by Milly
so undesirable. But one day Tims observed, cryptically, that "A watched
boy never boils"; and Emma, the nurse, told Mrs. Stewart bluntly that
she thought Master Tony wasn't near so well and bright when he was
always being looked after, as he was when he was let go his own way a
bit, like other children. Then a miserable fear beset Milly lest the
boy, too, should notice the change in his mother; lest he should look
forward to the disappearance of the woman who loved him so passionately,
watched over him with such complete devotion, and in his silent heart
regret, invoke, that other. It was at once soothing and bitter to her to
be assured by Ian and by Tims that they had never been able to discover
the least sign that Tony was aware when the change occurred between the
two personalities of his mother.

Two years passed in London, two years out of which the original owner
enjoyed a total share of only nine months; and this, indeed, she could
not truly have been said to have enjoyed, since happiness was far from
her. Death would have been a sad but simple catastrophe, to be met with
resignation to the will of God. What resignation could be felt before
this gradual strangulation of her being at the hands of a nameless yet
surely Evil Thing? Her love for Ian was so great that his sufferings
were more to her than her own, and in the space of those two years she
saw that on him, too, sorrow had set its mark. The glow of his good
looks and the brilliancy of his mind were alike dulled. It was not only
that his shoulders were bent, his hair thinned and touched with gray,
but his whole appearance, once so individual, was growing merely
typical; that of the middle-aged Academic, absorbed in the cares of his
profession. His real work was not merely at a stand-still, but a few
more such years and his capacity for it would be destroyed. She felt
this vaguely, with the intuition of love. If the partnership had been
only between him and her, he surely would have yielded to her prayer to
give up the headship of the Merchants' Guild College after a set term;
but he put the question by. Evidently that Other, who cared for nothing
but her own selfish interests and amusements, who spent upon them the
money that he ought to be saving, would never allow him to give up his
appointment unless something better offered. It was not only her own
life, it was the higher and hap