"What are you frightened about?"
"Well, there it is—nothing I suppose. Only I'm not good at managing sick people, especially when there's nothing definitely the matter with them. It's a case with all three of us—a case of nerves."
"Well, that's as serious a thing as any other disease."
"Yes, but I don't know what to do with it. Mother lies there all day. She seldom speaks, she scarcely eats anything. She entirely refuses to have a doctor. But worse than that is the extraordinary feeling that she has had during this last week about Rupert. She refuses to see him," Margaret Craven finally brought out.
"Refuses?"
"Yes, she says that he is altered to her. She says that he will not let her alone, that he is imagining things. Poor Rupert is most terribly distressed. He is imagining nothing. He would do anything for her, he is devoted to her."
"Since when has she had this idea?"
"You remember the day that you came last? when Rupert came in and had found your matchbox. It began about then. . . . Of course Rupert has not been well—he has never been well since that dreadful death of Mr. Carfax, and certainly since that day when you were here I think that he's been worse—strange, utterly unlike himself, sleeping badly, eating nothing. Poor, poor Rupert, I would do anything for him, for them both, but I am so utterly, utterly useless, What can I do?" she finally appealed to him.
"You said once," he answered her slowly, "that I could help you. If you still feel that, tell me, and I will do anything, anything. You know that I will do anything."
They came together, in that terrible room, like two children out of the dark. He suddenly caught her hand and she let him hold it. Then, very gently, she withdrew it.