ecstasy.

He was smiling at Viola, who sat in the chair facing him on the other
side of the hearth. She looked as if she had been there for ages. Also,
as if she had been sitting up all night.

She was smiling too, straight at Jevons. What I saw was the beatitude of
his response.

He tried to smile at me, too, as I came in, but the effort was a failure.
He wasn't really a bit glad to see me. Viola got up and left me with him.
I wasn't to stay with him for more than ten minutes, she said. It was the
first day he had been allowed to sit up.

I sat with him for fifteen minutes.

He was lodged, as before, in one room; but its domestic character was
disguised by many ingenious devices giving you the idea that it was
nothing but his study.

Well, there he was, haggard and yellow with jaundice, utterly pitiable as
to his appearance and surroundings; and yet he looked at me in,
positively, a sort of triumph, as much as to say, "Yes. Here I am. And
you, with all your superior resources, haven't managed half so well."

And I thought that he (not knowing Viola so well as I did) was suffering
from a lamentable delusion.

He said she had been awfully good to him. But it was rather hard luck on
him, wasn't it, that he should have gone and turned this beastly colour?

I said rather loftily I didn't suppose it mattered to Viola what colour
he turned.

(What _could_ it matter to her?)

She came in presently and took me down to her sitting-room, and gave me
tea. She owned to having sat up three nights with Jevons. She couldn't
have believed it possible that anybody could be so ill. For three days
and three nights the poor thing hadn't been able to keep anything
down--not even a drop of water. But to-day she had been feeding him on
the whites of eggs beaten up with brandy.

She seemed to me to be obsessed with Jevons's illness, and I made her
come out with me for ten minutes for a blow on the Heath. I tried to lead
her mind to other things, and she listened politely. Then there was
silence, and presently I felt her arm slide into mine (she had these
adorable impulses of confidence).

"Furny," she said, "what does jaundice come from?"

I said it generally came from chill.

She frowned, as if she were not satisfied with that explanation. And
there was another silence. Then she began again:

"Would being unhappy--very, _very_ unhappy--give it you?"

I thought I saw how her mind was working and I advised her to put that