"

"You--you used to like it."

"Oh, I dare say, years ago. I can't stand it now."

"Can't stand it?"

Again he was softened.

"Can't understand it, perhaps, my dear. But it comes to the same thing."

"Yes," said Aggie, "it comes to the same thing."

And she read no more. For the first time, for many years, she understood
him.

That night, as they parted, he did not draw her to him and kiss her; but
he let her tired head lean towards him, and stroked her hair. Her eyes
filled with tears. She laid her forehead on his shoulder.

"Poor Aggie," he said, "poor little woman."

She lifted her head suddenly.

"It's poor you," she whispered, "poor, poor dear."

VIII

"Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going, dearie? When the place is doing
you so much good, and Susie back in another week, and all."

[Illustration: "'Now, isn't it a pity for you to be going,
dearie?'"]

Aggie folded up a child's frock with great deliberation, and pressed it,
gently but firmly, into the portmanteau.

"I must go," she said, gravely. "Arthur wants me."

Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter's
preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a
flying visit, but to spend the greater part of the autumn. She and Arthur
had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together;
and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie's two years'
rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of
the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way
that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For
if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two
years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie
was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her
mother, with Willie and Dick and Emmy and the baby. The "girls," Kate and
Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of
luxury, and rested for once in her life.

All Aggie's visits had ended in the same way. The same letter from home,
the same firm and simple statement: "Arthur wants me. I must go," and
Aggie was gone before they had had a look at her.

"John and Susie will be quite offended."

"I can't help it. Arthur comes before John and Susie, and he wants me."

She had always been proud of that--his wanting her; his inability to do
w