"Oh, come with me," cried Anne, "help me to find John; I must find John."
The two women moved together hand in hand down the hill into the valley.
"I can make out nothing in this bewildering fog," said Anne, peering out from under her hand. "Whenever I seem just about to recognize a familiar place or object, it is to be blotted out by the fog. There was no fog before. Oh, Marian, it should be hereabouts; our house should be here!"
Marian withdrew her hand from Anne's.
"You disturb me," she said; "what you are doing is unlawful. Come away; something mortal might appear. If you will not, Anne, you drive me from you; I dare not stay."
Anne stood alone, trying to pierce with her gaze the fog which grew perceptibly thinner. The elm, and then the shrubbery of her garden began to show darkly, like shadows. She drew closer, for now the house itself loomed up, large and imposing, but in some intangible way different. The walls, the doors, the windows, all were there, all in their appointed places. What, then, was the indefinable change? It used to be considered such a pleasant house, so cheerful, so gay with its hanging creepers, and the bright curtains at the windows. Two years running a bird had nested in the cornice over the porch. But to-day it presented an aspect of gloom that was forbidding in the extreme. It gave the impression of a house to be avoided, a place where wrong things had happened, or might happen. Anne, now that she was so near that a word spoken aloud would reach her husband's ear, and she had only to lift the knocker and enter her own door, shrank back with an odd reluctance. She would walk round to the study first, and look through the window. Perhaps John would be there, reading, or writing a letter, and, without doubt, wondering what had become of his wife. The blinds were closed. How like John not to think of opening them. With all the blinds down like that, people would think there was a death——
John was sitting by the table, leaning forward, apparently asleep. He was so still, so quiet. Oh, if anything had happened to John! No; he raised his head as though he heard someone call, looking straight in his wife's eyes. Why did he not speak? What ailed him to look like that? Anne remembered that she was behind the closed blinds. His eyes had a strained look as though he almost saw her.
"John! John!" she cried.
The old man shivered and looked vaguely round him. Anne noticed that he had no fire. The hoar-frost of the morning, that looked so beautiful, he would feel that; he was very sensitive to changes of temperature and weather. His clothes, too, looked thinner than he was in the habit of wearing—and with a great black patch on one sleeve! Anne must see to this at once. John was less fit than ever to take care of himself. He looked so feeble, so old, so much older than she had thought. Ah, what would John do without her? Her heart yearned over him with the tender compassion of the strong for the weak, the deep affection that belongs to the habit of a lifetime—stronger than the love of youth.
"John, John, my husband!"