"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it something of her old whimsical self.
"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of intellectual effort. "It's a cut above 'em both—that's my fancy."
"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do when you get back to England?" she inquired.
"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?"
"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked.
"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly.
"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, "and we'll have to find a way of being busy together."
"His gryce'd like that," he responded.
She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds became silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a long time.
"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to shut out something that pained her sight.