"Oh, but I say, what is the matter?" he asked, in dismay; "there's something behind all this; tell me what it means."
"It means that I am going to die," she said. "I must die, I can't live." She held out her hands to him again, and almost against his will he felt himself going towards her till he had taken them in his. "I want you, dear," she said, and twined her arms round his neck. "I can't let you go to little Margaret. She has Mr. Garratt, remember, and I shall only live a little while. You must stay with me till I die—you will, won't you?"
"This is all nonsense," he said again; and in a kindly, affectionate manner, as a brother might have done, he gave her a kiss for the simple reason that he didn't know what else to do. "You are ill and played out."
"Yes, I'm ill," she said, and wriggled more completely into his arms.
He sincerely wished she wouldn't, but he held her for a few minutes rather awkwardly and then laid her back on the sofa.
"Look here," he said, "I should like to go and unpack and all that, and you ought to rest for a bit."
Of all the days that Tom had ever lived, that was the strangest—that day alone with Lena, who was ill and not ill; with Mrs. Lakeman invisible, he couldn't tell why; and with something at the back of—he couldn't tell what. He wrote out some telegrams before he went up-stairs. When he came down they had gone, and some instinct told him there was a reason for their disappearance; that the answer that came from Margaret later in the day was somewhat juggled, but how or why he didn't know. Lena wriggled and looked in his face and talked in low tones and called him "dear," but she had always done that. She did it to most people, and, though it made him uncomfortable, he couldn't bring himself to attach importance to it; he didn't even like being puzzled by it. Perhaps Mrs. Lakeman would be down to-morrow, he thought, and then things would explain themselves. Meanwhile he comforted himself by writing a long letter to Margaret, and with hoping that the morning would bring him one from her, but when it came there was not a sign. Then he felt uneasy, and determined that unless there was some good reason to the contrary he would go back to London that night.