It was prayer time, he said.
* * * * *
Rowcliffe had to drive Alice back that night to Upthorne.
"Well," he said, as they left the Vicarage behind them, "you see he isn't going to die."
"No," said Alice. "But he's out of his mind. I haven't killed him.
I've done worse. I've driven him mad."
And she stuck to it. She couldn't afford to part with her fear—yet.
Rowcliffe was distressed at the failure of his experiment. He told
Greatorex that there was nothing to be done but to wait patiently till
June. Then—perhaps—they would see.
In his own mind he had very little hope. He said to himself that he didn't like the turn Ally's obsession had taken. It was too morbid.
But when May came Alice lay in the big bed under the sagging ceiling with a lamentably small baby in her arms, and Greatorex sat beside her by the hour together, with his eyes fixed on her white face. Rowcliffe had told him to be on the lookout for some new thing or for some more violent sign of the old obsession. But nine days had passed and he had seen no sign. Her eyes looked at him and at her child with the same lucid, drowsy ecstasy.
And in nine days she had only asked him once if he knew how poor Papa was?