"Yes." He did not move.
"Come along then. This is only one of your usual chills. You'll be better to-morrow."
"I don't suppose I shall be well enough to go to the office."
He marked her quick start of dismay, and a tiny streak of comfort crept into his desolation. So at last he was proving slightly inconvenient, was he?
"Do you think I shall be well enough, Kathleen?"
"Not unless you get at once between the blankets." She wondered how much longer he would sit motionless on the edge of the bed, looking at her. Not that Gareth's doings really counted for much, entirely swamped as she was in her obsession of late love—but how like Gareth just at this time to catch a chill; she did not know whether to be amused or impatient at the intrusion of poultice and syrup on the gold-shot sublimity of her thoughts. She attended to the patient; he recognizing in her every movement an insistent determination to cure him sufficiently that he should leave the coast clear on the morrow. He was glad to be causing her trouble at last. Of course she must be allowed to go—through all his fever and irritation and muddle of desire, he strove to cling to that. He wanted her to go. It was as well that the drama was to be soon played to the finish; he was not at all certain how long he could retain his attitude of utter passivity.
Kathleen lay wide awake all through the night. At intervals she heard Gareth cough; could not tell if he slept or not; hoped for the best; it had not before occurred to her to take Gareth into consideration. But it was essential that no hitch should occur in her plan of escape. An hysterical fatalism brooded over her passion for Napier Kirby. She knew that if she hesitated once, paused to debate or analyse, looked beyond the actual moment of flight, or looked back to responsibility, habit, sentiment, then the sequence of events which had rushed to ten-thirty, Charing Cross, Friday evening, would pass by that single pin-point moment of action, never to touch it again. And she would be left. Forty-three cannot shatter and re-form her life, lose opportunities and find others, toss love aside and gather up love, as eighteen might do, as twenty-seven had done.
Gareth was not asleep; he tossed and coughed throughout that endless night, and wished he were alone, and that his head had not made every corner of the pillow such a burning discomfort.... "Her touch is as cold as the sand in a cave"—perhaps, when Kathleen had gone, leaving the room and the house empty, perhaps then his cool girl would return to him, bringing with her the old dreams of peace. Kathleen was going to-morrow.
He appeared rather better in the morning, but still feverish. Quite out of the question to breathe the raw gusty air outside, awhirl with crackling dancing leaves from the half-stripped branches.
"I'll have a fire put in the dining-room, Gareth. You'll be more comfortable there than here."