"They must have exercise," agreed Doctor Benton, but he still rubbed his chin. "Did she seem excited or feverish?"
"No, sir, she didn't. That was the strange thing. It was me that was excited though I kept quiet on the outside. At first it frightened me. I was afraid of—what you're afraid of, sir. It was only her not being excited—and speaking in her own natural voice that helped me to behave as sense told me I ought to. She was happy—that's what she looked and what she was."
She stopped a moment here and looked at the man. Then she decided to go on because she saw chances that he might, to a certain degree, understand.
"When she told me that he was not dead when she saw him, she said that she was not dead any more herself—that she had come alive. If believing it will keep her feeling alive, sir, wouldn't you say it would be a help?"
The Doctor had ceased rubbing his chin but he looked deeply thoughtful. He had several reasons for thoughtfulness in connection with the matter. In the present whirl of strange happenings in a mad war-torn world, circumstances which would once have seemed singular seemed so no longer because nothing was any longer normal. He realised that he had been by no means told all the details surrounding this special case, but he had understood clearly that it was of serious importance that this girlish creature's child should be preserved. He wondered how much more the finely mannered old family nurse knew than he did.
"Her vitality must be kept up— Nothing could be worse than inordinate grief," he said. "We must not lose any advantage. But she must be closely watched."
"I'll watch her, sir," answered Dowie. "And every order you give I'll obey like clockwork. Might I take the liberty of saying that I believe it'll be best if you don't mention the dream to her!"
"Perhaps you are right. On the whole I think you are. It's not wise to pay attention to hallucinations."
He did not mention the dream to Robin, but his visit was longer than usual. After it he drove down the moor thinking of curious things. The agonised tension of the war, he told himself, seemed to be developing new phases—mental, nervous, psychic, as well as physiological. What unreality—or previously unknown reality—were they founded upon? It was curious how much one had begun to hear of telepathy and visions. He himself had been among the many who had discussed the psychopathic condition of Lady Maureen Darcy, whose black melancholia had been dispersed like a cloud after her visits to a little sewing woman who lived over an oil dealer's shop in the Seven Sisters Road. He also was a war tortured man mentally and the torments he must conceal beneath a steady professional calm had loosened old shackles.
"Good God! If there is help of any sort for such horrors of despair let them take it where they find it," he found himself saying aloud to the emptiness of the stretches of heath and bracken. "The old nurse will watch."