Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, you mustn't go in for nerves, you know; you can't afford it."
"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith, can't I?"
He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open to him.
"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do. I told her you were coming."
"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to Edith.
Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do.
Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's worship perpetually new.
Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly.
"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she.
"Months, isn't it?" said he.