Jim writhes. It seems to him as if he were being blind-folded, and having his arms tied to his sides by a hundred strong yet invisible threads.
"Does no one know anything?" he cries miserably.
"I have told you exactly what the doctor said," says Cecilia, with the venial crossness bred of real anxiety. "I suppose you do not wish me to invent something that he did not say?"
"Of course not; but I wish I had been here—I wish I had been here!"—restlessly.
"Why were not you?"
No immediate answer.
"Why were not you?" repeats she, curiosity, for the moment, superseding her disquiet. "What prevented you? I thought, when you left us, that you meant to come back at once?"
"So I did, but——"
"But what?"
"I could not; I was with Byng."