"But your work!" she broke in suddenly. "You could not go: it is useless to talk of an impossibility."
"If it would make you better or happier, I would go."
"But the House?——"
"Nothing easier than to accept the Chiltern Hundreds," said Sydney.
"And your profession?" said Nan, raising herself on one arm and looking keenly at him.
She saw that he winced at the question, but he scarcely paused before he replied.
"I have thought it well over. I could go on practising when I came back to England; and in the meantime——I suppose you would have to take me abroad, Nan: I could not well take you," he said with a grim sort of jocularity, which she could not help seeing was painful to him. "If it did you good, as Burrows thinks it would, I should be quite prepared to give up everything else."
"Give up everything else," Nan murmured. "For me?"
He drew a long breath. "Well, yes. The fact is I have lost some of my old interest in my work, compared with other things. I have come to this, Nan—I would let my career go to the winds, if by doing so, I could give you back strength and happiness. Tell me what I can do: that is all. I have caused you a great deal of misery, I know: if there is any way in which I can——atone——"
He did not go on, and for a few moments Nan could not speak. There was color enough in her cheeks now, and light in her eyes, but she turned away from him, and would not let him see her face.