She started, her head fell back on his arm, and her brown eyes considered him:
"William! I saw the Standard at Geneva. Aren't you going home—because of politics?"
"A few telegrams will settle that. I shall take you to Geneva to-morrow. We shall get doctors there."
A little smile played about her mouth—a smile which did not seem to have any reference to his words or to her next question.
"Nobody thinks of the book now, do they, William?"
"No, Kitty, no! It's all forgotten, dear."
"Oh, it was abominable!" She drew a long breath. "But I can't help it—I did get a horrid pleasure out of writing it—till Venice—till you left off loving me. Oh, William! William!—what a good thing it is I'm dying!"
"Hush, Kitty—hush."
"It gives one such an unfair advantage, though, doesn't it? You can't ever be angry with me again. There won't be time. William, dear!—I haven't had a brain like other people. I know it. It's only since I've been so ill—that I've been sane! It's a strange feeling—as though one had been bled—and some poison had drained away. But it would never do for me to take a turn and live! Oh no!—people like me are better safely under the grass. Oh, my beloved! my beloved! I just want to say that all the time, and nothing else—I've hungered so to say it!"
He answered her with all the anguish, all the passionate, fruitless tenderness and vain comfortings that rise from the human heart in such a strait. But when he asked her pardon for his hardness towards the Dean's petition, when he said that his conscience had tormented him thenceforward, she would scarcely hear a word.