She turned away with a scornful smile.
Perhaps it was because his thoughts so often wandered in that direction that his face seemed to have grown harder, his mouth sterner.
"Four months!" he murmured, "twelve months in a year—say, forty years—long years! Forty years like these last four months!"
"Forty years, forty years!" rang mockingly in his ears.
Suddenly he paused.
"Forty or a hundred, I will never give in!" he said, and his mouth looked almost cruel in its set sternness.
Spring had come. A soft, warm, early spring that brought all the tender flowers peeping out before their time.
And in the warm, trying spring Hugh Michelhurst fell ill of a low fever.
At the end of May he rose from his sick bed, and refused to be an invalid any longer.