'You have seen Dr. Edmondson?' she asked, pale and still, except for a little nervous quivering of the lip.
He stooped and kissed her hand.
'Yes. He says he goes with you to Algiers. I will come after if you will have me. The climate may do wonders.'
She looked at him with the most heart-rending of smiles.
'Will you go in to Robert? He is in the study.'
He went, in trepidation, and found Robert lying tucked up on the sofa, apparently reading.
'Don't—don't, old fellow,' he said affectionately, as Flaxman almost broke down. 'It comes to all of us sooner or later. Whenever it comes we think it too soon. I believe I have been sure of it for some time. We are such strange creatures! It has been so present to me lately that life was too good to last. You remember the sort of feeling one used to have as a child about some treat in the distance—that it was too much joy—that something was sure to come between you and it? Well, in a sense, I have had my joy, the first-fruits of it at least.'
But as he threw his arms behind his head, leaning back on them, Flaxman saw the eyes darken and the naïve boyish mouth contract, and knew that under all these brave words there was a heart which hungered.
'How strange!' Robert went on reflectively; 'yesterday I was travelling, walking like other men, a member of society. To-day I am an invalid; in the true sense, a man no longer. The world has done with me; a barrier I shall never recross has sprung up between me and it.—Flaxman, to-night is the story-telling. Will you read to them? I have the book here prepared—some scenes from David Copperfield. And you will tell them?'