They had fallen suddenly upon an intimate note. It was a note that he had never touched with Mary. That they should be talking like this filled him with a dazed surprise. He as well as she was taking it for granted that she had given him sleep, and could give him sleep again.
He gave himself a sudden shake.
“I’m going away,” he said in a harder voice.
There was a pause.
“I’m glad,” said Elizabeth, and then there was silence again.
This time it was David who spoke, and he spoke in the hot, insistent tones of a man who argues a losing case.
“One can’t go on not sleeping. That is what I said to old Wyatt Byng to-day.”
“Sir Wyatt Byng?” said Elizabeth quickly.
“Yes—I saw him. Skeffington would have me see him, but what’s the use? He swears I shall sleep, if I take the stuff he’s given me—the latest French fad—but I don’t sleep. I seem to have lost the way—and one can’t go on.”
He paused, and then said frowning: