“I’m sorry!” said Hugh. “I’ll go and look at it again to-morrow.”
“Yes, but you probably don’t know a good kitchen from a bad one,” said Edith sharply.
It was that sort of thing that so often during these weeks made his heart bleed. He knew—how well he knew—that it was not she who spoke, but only this hideous disease. He never confused the one with the other, for he knew Edith too well for that. All these weeks she had been fighting her battle, desperately, splendidly, and all these weeks she had been constantly impatient with him, irritated by him. And quietly, proudly, he wore that like a decoration. It was just because she loved him that she was like that with him. With her nurse, whom she detested, she was studiously, evenly polite, thanking her for all sorts of infinitesimal services, hoping she was not tired, fearing to disturb her. But Hugh divined the cause of her impatience with him, and knew that she divined it too.
Then swiftly came the rest of the heavenly change. Edith, utterly weary, had gone to bed one night while the snow still fell, and Hugh, not long after, though it was still early, had followed. The drowsiness of snow was on him and he slept heavily, expecting even in sleep to awaken to that numb, torpid pain of soul that had been his all these weeks. But he did not wake thus.
It was a new heaven and a new earth. Sun and frost had entered. Blue weather.
Trouble had passed, and joy came with that morning. It came in all manners, big and small. The kitchen of the possible house proved to be palatial. Peggy, by the morning post, announced that she and Jim and Daisy would all come out for Christmas. And Edith, so she said, when he went to her, felt different.
“Oh, Hughie! the sun has come,” she said as he entered; “and how good the air smells. I don’t feel nearly so tired, either.”
“And that is the top of the morning,” said he.
She looked at him, then avoided his eye.
“I have been horrible to you all these weeks,” she said quietly. “I knew it perfectly well. Have I hurt you, Hughie?”