“You are doing what your medical adviser orders.”
“Yes,” she answered, “but can you guarantee that nothing will happen in my absence? Will it be any comfort to me, if things go wrong, to say that I was obeying orders?”
He did not directly answer this question, which had been largely rhetorical in intention. Instead, he said:
“Yes, I suppose you are dreadfully bored.”
She checked an impulse toward complete denial. He had stated half the truth. She was bored, but she tried to make him see that there was more than that in her attitude. He, a man and a bachelor, could hardly realize how serious might be the results of a mother’s protracted absence.
He had at times a trick—irritating to Mrs. Royce—of replying to something slightly different from the thought one had expressed. He did so now.
“And if they do miss you,” he said, “won’t that be a help?”
Yes, certainly, it would be a help, and it was perhaps that thought which kept her on day after day—the thought that they were missing her in every detail of life, the belief that the daily service, the common-place sacrifice of an existence like hers could only be realized by its cessation.
One reward she had. Her books began to grow more interesting. “It grows better as you get into it,” she explained to one of the nurses, but in her heart she knew the improvement was not in the book.
At last a night came when she had a dream, more poignant, more vivid than any material message could have been—a dream of disaster at home. She was not a superstitious woman, but the impression already in her mind was immensely deepened. She was needed at home; that was her place. What madness it had been for her to go away, and what a selfish madness, made up partly of desire to rest and partly of a wish to prove Despard wrong! She might have cause to reproach herself for the remainder of her life. She could forgive him all that she herself had suffered, removed from her work, deprived of all occupation and happy home activities, but if anything had gone wrong with those she loved——