'When do you want to go to Thurston?'
'As soon as possible. Can you find me my fishing-basket and get me some sandwiches? I shall only lounge there and take it easy.'
She did everything for him that wifely hands could do. Then when his fishing-basket was strapped on, and his lunch was slipped into the capacious pocket of the well-worn shooting coat, she threw her arms round him.
'Robert, you will come away soon.'
He roused himself and kissed her.
'I will,' he said simply, withdrawing, however, from her grasp as though he could not bear those close pleading eyes. 'Good-bye! I shall be back some time in the afternoon.'
From her post beside the study window she watched him take the short cut across the cornfield. She was miserable, and all at sea. A week ago he had been so like himself again, and now——! Never had she seen him in anything like this state of physical and mental collapse.
'Oh, Robert,' she cried under her breath, with an abandonment like a child's, strong soul that she was, 'why won't you tell me, dear? Why won't you let me share? I might help you through—I might.'
She supposed he must be again in trouble of mind. A weaker woman would have implored, tormented, till she knew all. Catherine's very strength and delicacy of nature, and that respect which was inbred in her for the sacra of the inner life, stood in her way. She could not catechise him, and force his confidence on this subject of all others. It must be given freely. And oh! it was so long in coming!
Surely, surely, it must be mainly physical, the result of over-strain—expressing itself in characteristic mental worry, just as daily life reproduces itself in dreams. The worldly man suffers at such times through worldly things, the religious man through his religion. Comforting herself a little with thoughts of this kind, and with certain more or less vague preparations for departure, Catherine got through the morning as best she might.