"I never can find it," she said, "and that is so frightening! It may have stopped, for all I know."
"Dear lady," said Mr. Tresham, "I will promise to tell you whether it has stopped or not, not more than a minute after it has done so. Alas! it will then be too late."
"Ah! there it is," said Mrs. Antrobus at length. "One, two. It has stopped now. Take the time, Mr. Tresham, and tell me when a minute has gone."
"Your mother is the only really healthy person I know," said Lady Oxted to Evie. "Whether she is ill or not, she always believes that she is perfectly well. And as long as one fully believes that, as she does, it really matters little how ill one is!"
Lord Oxted got slowly out of his chair.
"Some doctor lately analyzed a cubic inch of air in what we should call a clean London drawing-room," he said. "He found that it contained over two hundred bacilli, each of which, if they lived carefully and married, would, with its family, be soon able to kill the strongest man. I surrendered as soon as I heard it!"
"Quite the best thing to do," said Mr. Tresham, "for otherwise they would kill you. It is better to give yourself up, and be taken alive!"
"It is certainly better to remain alive," said Mrs. Antrobus. "That is why we all go to bed now when we get the influenza. We surrender, like Lord Oxted, and so the bacilli do not kill us, but only send us away to the seaside. It is the people who will not surrender who die. Personally I should never dream of going about with a high temperature. It sounds so improper!"
Evie was sitting very upright in her chair, listening to this surprising conversation. She had seen Mrs. Antrobus for the first time the evening before, and had made Lady Oxted laugh by asking whether she was a little mad. It had been almost more puzzling to be told that she was not, than if she had been told that she was. And at this remark about her temperature, Evie suddenly looked round, as if for a sympathizing eye. An eye there certainly was, and she felt as if, in character of a hostess, she had looked for and caught Harry Vail's. At any rate, he instantly rose, she with him, and together they strolled out of the Syrian tent on the lawn, and down toward the cherry-planted orchard.
For a few paces they went in silence, each feeling as if a preconcerted signal had passed between them. Then Evie stopped.