Book 2 - Chapter 4

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_ BOOK II CHAPTER IV

Ten days later, in the midst of her preparations to leave the city for Clark's Hills, Rachael was summoned to the telephone by the news of a serious change in young Charlie Gregory's condition. Charlie had been ill for perhaps a week; kept at home and babied by his grandmother and Miss Cannon, the nurse, visited daily by his adored Aunt Rachael, and nearly as often by the uproarious young Gregorys, and duly spoiled by every maid in the house. Warren went in to see him often in the evenings, for trivial as his illness was, all the members of his immediate family agreed later that there had been in it, from the beginning, something vaguely alarming and menacing.

He was a quiet, peculiar, rather friendless youth at twenty-six; he had never had "girls," like the other boys, and, while he read books incessantly, Rachael knew it to be rather from loneliness than any other motive, as his silence was from shyness rather than reserve. His dying was as quiet as his living, between a silent luncheon in the gloomy old dining-room when nobody seemed able either to eat or speak, and a dreadful dinner hour when Miss Cannon sobbed unobtrusively, Warren and Rachael talked in low tones, and the chairs at the head and foot of the table were untenanted.

Only a day or two later his grandmother followed him, and Rachael and her husband went through the sombre days like two persons in an oppressive dream. Great grief they did not naturally feel, for Warren's curious self-absorption extended even to his relationship with his mother, and Charlie had always been one of the unnecessary, unimportant figures of which there are a few in every family. But the events left a lasting mark upon Rachael's life. She had grown really to love the old woman, and had felt a certain pitying affection for Charlie, too. He had been a good, gentle, considerate boy always, and it was hard to think of him as going before life had really begun for him.

On the morning of the day he died an incident had occurred, or rather two had occurred, that even then filled her with vague discomfort, and that she was to remember for many days to come.

She had been crossing the great, dark entrance hall, late in the morning, on some errand to the telephone, or to the service department of the house, her heart burdened by the sombre shadow of death that already lay upon them all, when the muffled street- door bell had rung, and the butler, red eyed, had admitted two women. Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and old Fanny.

"Charlotte!" she said, coming toward the girl. And at her low, tense tone, Charlotte had begun to cry.

"Aunt Rachael"--the old name came naturally after seven years-- "you'll think I'm quite crazy coming here this way"--Charlotte, as always, was justifying her shy little efforts at living--"but M'ma was busy, and"--the old, nervous gasp--"and it seemed only friendly to come and--and inquire--"

"Don't cry, dear!" said Rachael's rich, kind voice. She put a hand upon Charlotte's shoulder. "Did you want to ask for Charlie?"

"I know how odd, how very odd it must look," said Charlotte, managing a wet smile, "and my crying--perfectly absurd--I can't think why I'm so silly!"

"We've all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning," Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny. "Dear boy, he is very ill. Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now--"

At this poor Charlotte tried to compose her face to the merely sorrowful and shocked expression of a person justified in her friendly concern, but succeeded only in giving Mrs. Gregory a quivering look of mortal hurt.

"I was afraid so," she stammered huskily. "Elfrida Hamilton told me. I was so--sorry--"

Rachael began to perceive that this was a great adventure, a tragic and heroic initiative for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, red- eyed behind her strong glasses, the bloom of youth gone from her face, was perhaps touching this morning, the pinnacle of the few strong emotions her life was to know.

"How well did you know Charlie, dear?" asked Rachael when Fanny was for the moment out of hearing and they were in the dark, rep- draped reception-room. She had asked Charlotte to sit down, but Charlotte nervously had said that she could stay but another minute.

"Oh, n-n-not very well, Aunt Rachael--that is, we didn't see each other often, since"--Rachael knew since when, and liked Charlotte for the clumsy substitute--"since Billy was married. I know Charlie called, but M'ma didn't tell me until weeks later, and then we were on the ocean. We met now and then, and once he telephoned, and I think he would have liked to see me, but M'ma felt so strongly--there was no way. And then last summer--we h-h- happened to meet, he and I, at Jane Cook's wedding, and we had quite a talk. I knew M'ma would be angry, but it just seemed as if I couldn't think of it then. And we talked of the things we liked, you know, the sort of house we both liked--not like other people's houses!" Charlotte's plain young face had grown bright with the recollection, but now her voice sank lifelessly again. "But M'ma made me promise never to speak to him again, and of course I promised," she said dully.

"I see." Rachael was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say.

"I suppose I couldn't--speak to him a moment, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte was scarlet, but she got the words out bravely.

"Oh, my dear, he wouldn't know you. He doesn't know any of us now. He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little--"

Charlotte was as pale now as she had been rosy before, her lip trembled, and her whole face seemed to be suffused with tears.

"I see," she said in turn. "Thank you, Aunt Rachael, thanks ever so much. I--I wish you'd tell his grandmother how sorry I am. I-- suppose Fanny and I had better go now."

But before she went Rachael opened her arms, and Charlotte came into them, and cried bitterly for a few minutes.

"Poor little girl!" said the older woman tenderly. "Poor little girl!"

"I always loved you," gulped Charlotte, "and I would have come to see you, if M'ma--And of course it was nothing but the merest friendship b-between Charlie and me, only we--we always seemed to like each other."

And Charlotte, her romance ended, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and went away. Rachael went slowly upstairs.

Late that same afternoon, as she and the trained nurse were dreamily keeping one of the long sick-watches, she looked at the patient, and was surprised to see his rather insignificant eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Instantly she went to the bedside and knelt down.

"What is it, Charlie-boy?" she asked, in the merest rich, tender essence of a tone. The sick eyes broke over her distressedly. She could see the fine dew of perspiration at his waxen temples, and the lean hand over which she laid her own was cool after all these feverish days, unwholesomely cool.

"Aunt Rachael--" The customs of earth were still strong when he could waste so much precious breath upon the unnecessary address. The nurse hovered nervously near, but did not attempt to silence him. "Going fast," he whispered.

"It will be rest, Charlie-boy," she answered, tears in her eyes.

He smiled, and drifted into that other world so near our own for a few moments. Then she started at Charlotte's name.

"Charlotte," he said in a ghostly whisper, "said she would like a house all green-and pink-with roses--"

Rachael was instantly tense. Ah, to get hold of poor starved little Charlotte, to give her these last precious seconds, to let her know he had thought of her!

"What about Charlotte, dear, dear boy?" she asked eagerly.

"I thought--it would be so pleasant--there--" he said, smiling. He closed his eyes. She heard the little prayer that he had learned in his babyhood for this hour. Then there was silence. Silence.

Silence. Rachael looked fearfully at the nurse. A few minutes later she went to tell his grandmother, who, with two grave sisters sitting beside her, had been lying down since the religious rites of an hour or two ago. Rachael and the smaller, rosy-faced nun helped the stiff, stricken old lady to her feet, and it was with Rachael's arm about her that she went to her grandson's side.

That night old Mrs. Gregory turned to her daughter-in-law and said: "You're good, Rachael. Someone prayed for you long ago; someone gave you goodness. Don't forget--if you ever need--to turn to prayer. I don't ask you to do any more. It was for James to make his sons Christians, and James did not do so. But promise me something, Rachael: if James--hurts you, if he fails you--promise me that you will forgive him!"

"I promise," Rachael said huskily, her heart beating quick with vague fright. Mrs. Gregory was in her deep armchair, she looked old and broken to-night, far older than she would look a few days later when she lay in her coffin. Rachael had brought her a cup of hot bouillon, and had knelt, daughter fashion, to see that she drank it, and now the thin old hand clutched her shoulder, and the eager old eyes were close to her face.

"I have made mistakes, I have had every sorrow a woman can know," said old Mrs. Gregory, "but prayer has never failed me, and when I go, I believe I will not be afraid!" "I have made mistakes, too," Rachael said, strangely stirred, "and for the boys' sake, for Warren's sake, I want to be--wise!"

The thin old hand patted hers. Old Mrs. Gregory lay with closed eyes, no flicker of life in her parchment-colored face. "Pray about it!" she said in a whisper. She patted Rachael's hands for another moment, but she did not speak again.

At the funeral, kneeling by Warren's side in the great cathedral, her pale face more lovely than ever in a setting of fresh black, Rachael tried for the first time in her life to pray.

They were rich beyond any dream or need now. Rachael could hardly have believed that so great a change in her fortune could make so little change in her feeling. A sudden wave of untimely heat smote the city, and it was hastily decided that the boys and their mother must get to the shore, leaving all the details of settling his mother's estate to Warren. In the autumn Rachael would make those changes in the old house of which she had dreamed so many years ago. Warren was not to work too hard, and was to come to them for every week-end.

He took them down himself in the car, Rachael beside him on the front seat, her baby in her arms, Martin and Mary, with Jim, in the tonneau. Home Dunes had been opened and aired; luncheon was waiting when they got there. Rachael felt triumphant, powerful. Between their mourning and Warren's unexpected business responsibilities she would have a summer to her liking.

He went away the next day, and Rachael began a series of cheerful letters. She tried not to reproach him when a Saturday night came without bringing him, she schooled herself to read, to take walks, to fight depression and loneliness. She and Alice practised piano duets, studied Italian, made sick calls in the village, and sewed for the babies of dark's Hills and Quaker Bridge. About twice a month, usually together, the two went up to the city for a day's shopping. Then George and Warren met them, and they dined and perhaps went to the theatre together. It was on one of these occasions that Rachael learned that Magsie Clay was in town.

"Working hard--too hard," said Warren in response to her questions. "She's rehearsing already for October."

"Warren! In all this heat?"

"Yes, and she looks pulled down, poor kid!"

"You've seen her, then?"

"Oh, I see her now and then. Betty Bowditch had her to dinner, and now and then she and I go to tea, and she tells me about her troubles, her young men, and the other women in the play!"

"I wonder if she wouldn't come down to us for a week?" Rachael said pleasantly. Warren brightened enthusiastically. A little ocean air would do Magsie worlds of good.

Magsie, lunching with Rachael at Rachael's club the following week, was prettily appreciative.

"I would just love to come!" she said gratefully. "I'll bring my bathing suit, and live in the water! But, Rachael, it can only be from Friday night until Monday morning. Perhaps Greg will run me down in the car, and bring me up again?"

"What else would I do?" Warren said, smiling.

Rachael fixed the date. On the following Friday night she met Warren and Magsie at the gate, at the end of the long run. Warren was quite his old, delightful self; the boys, perfection. Alice gave a dinner party, and Alice's brother did not miss the opportunity of a flirtation with Magsie. The visit, for everyone but Rachael, was a great success.

The little actress and Rachael's husband were on friendly, even intimate, terms; Magsie showed Warren a letter, Warren murmured advice; Magsie reached a confident little brown hand to him from the raft; Warren said, "Be careful, dear!" when she sprang up to leap from the car. Well, said Rachael bravely, no harm in that! Warren was just the big, sweet, simple person to be flattered by Magsie's affection. How could she help liking him?

She went to the gate again, on Monday morning this time, to say good-bye. Magsie was tucked in trimly in Rachael's place beside Rachael's husband; her gold hair glinted under a smart little hat; gloves, silk stockings, and gown were all of the becoming creamy tan she wore so much.

"Saturday night?" Rachael said to Warren.

"Possibly not, dear. I can tell better later in the week."

"You don't know how we slaves envy you, Rachael!" Magsie said. "When Greg and I are gasping away in some roof-garden, having our mild little iced teas, we'll think of you down here on the glorious ocean!"

"We're a mutual consolation league!" Warren said with an appreciative laugh.

"He laughs," Magsie said, "but, honestly, I don't know where I'd be without Greg. You don't know how kind he is to me, Rachael!"

"He's kind to everyone," Rachael smiled.

"I don't have to TELL you how much I've enjoyed this!" Magsie added gratefully.

"Do it any other time you can!" Rachael waved them out of sight. She stood at the gate, in the fragrant, warm summer morning, for a long time after they were gone.

In the late summer, placidly wasting her days on the sands with the two boys, a new experience befell Rachael. She had hoped, at about the time of Jimmy's third birthday, to present him and his little brother with a sister. Now the hope vanished, and Rachael, awed and sad, set aside a tiny chamber in her heart for the dream, and went on about her life sobered and made thoughtful over the great possibilities that are wrapped in every human birth. Warren had warned her that she must be careful now, and, charmed at his concern for her grief and shock, she rested and saved herself wherever she could.

But autumn came, and winter came, and she did not grow strong. It became generally understood that Mrs. Gregory was not going about this season, and her friends, when they came to call in Washington Square, were apt to find her comfortably established on the wide couch in one of the great rooms that were still unchanged, with a nurse hovering in the background, and the boys playing before the fire. Rachael would send the children away with Mary, ring for tea, and chatter vivaciously with her guests, later retailing all the gossip to Warren when he came to sit beside her. Often she got up and took her place at the table, and once or twice a month, after a quiet day, was tucked into the motor car by the watchful Miss Snow, and went to the theatre or opera, to be brought carefully home again at eleven o'clock, and given into Miss Snow's care again.

She was not at all unhappy, the lessening of social responsibility was a real relief, and Warren's solicitude and sympathy were a tonic of which she drank deep, night and morning. His big warm hands, his smile, the confidence of his voice, these thrilled and rejuvenated her continually.

The boys were a delight to her. In their small rumpled pajamas they came into her room every morning, dewy from sleep, full of delicious plans for the day. Jim was a masterful baby whose continually jerking head was sure to bump his mother if she attempted too much hugging, but dark-eyed, grave little Derry was "cuddly"; he would rest his shining head contentedly for minutes together on his mother's breast, and when she lifted him from his crib late at night for a last kiss, his warm baby arms would circle her neck, and his rich little voice murmur luxuriously, "Hug Derry."

Muffled rosily in gaiters and furs, or running about her room in their white, rosetted slippers, with sturdy arms and knees bare, or angelic in their blue wrappers after the evening bath, they were equally enchanting to their mother.

"It's a marvel to see how you can be so patient!" Warren said one evening when he was dressing for an especially notable dinner, and Rachael, in her big Chinese coat, was watching the process contentedly from the couch in his upstairs sitting-room.

"Well, that's the odd thing about ill health, Greg--you haven't any chance to answer back," she answered thoughtfully. "If money could make me well, or if effort could, I'd get well, of course! But there seem to be times when you simply are SICK. It's an extraordinary experience to me; it's extraordinary to lie here, and think of all the hundreds of thousands of other women who are sick, just simply and quietly laid low with no by-your-leave! Of course, my being ill doesn't make much trouble; the boys are cared for, the house goes on, and I don't suffer! But suppose we were poor, and the children needed me, and you couldn't afford a nurse- -then what? For I'd have to collapse and lie here just the same!"

"It's no snap for me," Warren grumbled after a silence. "Gosh! I will be glad when you're well--and when the damn nurse is out of the house!"

"Warren, I thought you liked Miss Snow!"

"Well, I do, I suppose--in a way. But I don't like her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--so everlastingly sweet and fresh!' I declare I believe my watch is losing time--this is the third time this week I've been late!'"

This was said in exactly Miss Snow's tone, and Rachael laughed.

But when he was gone a deep depression fell upon her. Dear old boy, it was not much of a life for him, going about alone, sitting down to his meals with only a trained nurse for company! Shut away so deliciously from the world with her husband and sons, enjoying the very helplessness that forced her to lean so heavily upon him, she had forgotten how hard it was for Greg!

Yet how could she get well when the stubborn weakness and languor persisted, when her nights were so long and sleepless, her appetite so slight, her strength so quickly exhausted?

"When do you think I will get well, Miss Snow?" she would ask.

"Come, now, we're not going to bother our heads about THAT," Miss Snow would say cheerfully. "Why, you're not sick! You've just got to rest and take care of yourself, that's all! Dear ME, if you were suffering every minute of the time, you might have something to grumble about!"

Doctor Valentine was equally unsatisfactory, although Rachael loved the simple, homely man so much that she could not be vexed by his kindly vagueness:

"These things are slow to fight, Rachael," said George Valentine. "Alice had just such a fight years ago. When the human machinery runs down, there's nothing for it but patience! You did too much last winter, nursing the baby until you left for California, and then only the hot summer between that and September! Just go slow!"

Perhaps once a month Magsie came in to see Rachael, ready to pour tea, to flirt with any casual caller, or to tickle the roaring baby with the little fox head on her muff. She had been playing in a minor part in a successful production. Among all the callers who came and went perhaps Magsie was the most at home in the Gregory house--a harmless little affectionate creature, unimportant, but always welcome.

Slowly health and strength came back, and one by one Rachael took up the dropped threads of her life. The early spring found her apparently herself again, but there was a touch of gray here and there in her dark hair, and Elinor and Judy told each other that her spirits were not the same.

They did not know what Rachael knew, that there was a change in Warren, so puzzling, so disquieting, that his wife's convalescence was delayed by many a wakeful hour and many a burst of secret tears on his account. She could not even analyze it, much less was she fit to battle with it with her old splendid strength and sanity.

His general attitude toward her, in these days, was one of paternal and brisk kindliness. He liked her new gown, he didn't care much for that hat, she didn't look awfully well, better telephone old George, it wouldn't do to have her sick again! Yes, he was going out, unless she wanted him for something? She was reminded hideously of her old days with Clarence.

Shaken and weak still, she fought gallantly against the pain and bewilderment of the new problem. She invited the persons he liked to the house, she effaced her own claim, she tried to get him to talk of his cases. Sometimes, as the spring ripened, she planned whole days with him in the car. They would go up to Ossining and see the Perrys, or they would go to Jersey and spend the day with Doctor Cheseborough.

Perhaps Warren accepted these suggestions, and they had a cloudless day. Or when Sunday morning came, and the boys, coated and capped, were eager to start, he might evade them.

"I wonder if you'll feel badly, Petty, if I don't go?"

"Oh, WARREN!"

"Well, my dear, I've got some work to do. I ought to look up that meningitis case--the Italian child. Louise'll give me a bite of lunch--"

"But, dearest, that spoils our day!" Rachael would fling her wraps down, and face him ruefully. "How can I go alone!_ I don't want to. And it's SUCH a day, and the babies are so sweet--"

"There's no reason why you and the children shouldn't go." She had come to know that mild, almost reproachful, tone.

"Oh, but Warren, that spoils it all!"

"I'm sorry!"

Rachael would shut her lips firmly over protest. At best she might wring from him a reluctant change of mind and an annoyed offer of company which she must from sheer pride decline. At worst she would be treated with a dignified silence--the peevish and exacting woman who could not understand.

So she would go slowly down to the car, to Mary beaming beside Martin in the front seat, to the delicious boys tumbling about in the back, eager for Mother. With one on each side of her, a retaining hand on the little gaiters, she would wave the attentive husband and father an amiable farewell. The motor car would wheel about in the bare May sunshine, the river would be a ripple of dancing blue waves, morning riders would canter on the bridle- path, and white-frocked babies toddle along the paths. Such a morning for a ride, if only Warren were there! But Rachael would try to enjoy her run, and would eat Mrs. Perry's or Mrs. Cheseborough's fried chicken and home-made ices with gracious enthusiasm; everyone was quite ready to excuse Warren; his beautiful wife was the more popular of the two.

He was always noticeably affectionate when they got home. Rachael, her color bright from sun and wind, would entertain him with a spirited account of the day while she dressed.

"I wish I'd gone with you; I will next time!" he invariably said.

On the next Sunday she might try another experience. No plans to- day. The initiative should be left to him. Breakfast would drag along until after ten o'clock, and Mary would appear with a low question. Were the boys to go out to the Park? Rachael would pause, undecided. Well, yes, Mary might take them, but bring them in early, in case Doctor Gregory wished to take them somewhere.

And ten minutes later he might jump up briskly. Well! how about a little run up to Pelham Manor, wonderful morning--could she go as she was? Rachael would beg for ten minutes; she might come downstairs in seven to find him wavering.

"Would you mind if we made it a pretty short run, dear, and then if I dropped you here and went on down to the hospital for a little while?"

"Why, Warren, it was your suggestion, dear! Why take a drive at all if you don't feel like it!"

"Oh, it's not that--I'm quite willing to. Where are the kids?"

"Mary took them out. They've got to be back for naps at half-past eleven, you see."

"I see." He would look at his watch. "Well, I'll tell you what I think I'll do. I'll change and shave now--" A pause. His voice would drop vaguely. "What would YOU like to do?" he might suggest amiably.

Such a conversation, so lacking in his old definite briskness where their holidays were concerned, would daunt Rachael with a sense of utter forlornness. Sometimes she offered a plan, but it was invariably rejected. There were friends who would have been delighted at an unexpected lunch call from the Gregorys, but Warren yawned and shuddered negatives when she mentioned their names. In the end, he would go off to the hospital for an hour or two, and later would telephone to his wife to explain a longer absence: he had met some of the boys at the club and they were rather urging him to stay to lunch; he couldn't very well decline.

"Would you like to have me come down and join you anywhere later?" his wife might ask in the latter case.

"No, thank you, no. I may come straight home after lunch, and in that case I'd cross you. Boys all right?"

"Lovely." Rachael would sit at the telephone desk, after she had hung up the receiver, wrapped in bitter thought, a bewildered pain at her heart. She never doubted him; to-morrow good, old, homely, trustworthy George Valentine, whose wife and children were visiting Alice's mother in Boston, would speak of the bridge game at the club. But with his wife waiting for him at home, his wife who lived all the six days of the week waiting for this seventh day, why did he need the society of his men friends?

A commonplace retaliation might have suggested itself to her, but there was no fighting instinct in Rachael now. She did not want to pique him, to goad him, to flirt with him. He should be hers honorably and openly, without devices, without intrigue. Stirred to the deeps of her being by wifehood and motherhood, by her passionate love for her husband and children, it was a humiliating thought that she must coquette with and flatter other men. As a matter of fact, she found it difficult to talk with any interest of anything except Warren, his work and his plans, of Jimmy and Derry, and perhaps of Home Dunes. If it were a matter of necessity she might always turn to the new plays and books, the opera of the season, or the bill for tenement requirements or juvenile delinquents, but mere personalities and intrigue she knew no more. These matters were all of secondary interest to her now; it seemed to Rachael that the time had come when mere personalities, when bridge and cocktails and dancing and half-true scandals were not satisfying.

"Warren," she said one evening when the move to Home Dunes was near, "should you be sorry if I began to go regularly to church again?"

"No," he said indifferently, giving her rather a surprised glance over his book. "Churchgoing coming in again?"

"It's not that," Rachael said, smiling over a little sense of pain, "but I--I like it. I want the boys to think that their mother goes to church and prays--and I really want to do it myself!"

He smiled, as always a little intolerant of what sounded like sentiment.

"Oh, come, my dear! Long before the boys are old enough to remember it you'll have given it up again!"

"I hope not," Rachael said, sighing. "I wish I had never stopped. I wish I were one of these mild, nice, village women who put out clean stockings for the children every Saturday night, and clean shirts and ginghams, and lead them all into a pew Sunday morning, and teach them the Golden Rule, and to honor their father and their mother, and all the rest of it!"

"And what do you think you would gain by that?" Warren asked.

"Oh, I would gain--security," Rachael said vaguely, but with a suspicion of tears in her eyes. "I would have something to--to stand upon, to be guided by. There is a purity, an austerity, about that old church-going, loving-God-and-your-neighbor ideal. Truth and simplicity and integrity and uprightness--my old great- grandmother used to use those words, but one doesn't ever hear them any more! Everything's half black and half white nowadays; we're all as good or as bad as we happen to be born. There's no more discipline, no more self-denial, no more development of character! I want to--to hold on to something, now that forces I can't control are coming into my life."

"What do you mean by forces you can't control?" he asked with a sort of annoyed interest.

"Love, Warren," she answered quickly. "Love for you and the boys, and fear for you and the boys. Love always brings fear. And illness--I never thought of it before I was ill. And jealousy--"

"What have you got to be jealous of?" he asked, somewhat gruffly, as she paused.

"Your work," Rachael said simply; "everything that keeps you away from me!"

"And you think going to Saint Luke's every Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, and listening to Billy Graves, will fix it all up?" he smiled not unkindly. But as she did not answer his smile, and as the tears he disliked came into her eyes, his tone changed. "Now I'll tell you what's the matter with you, my dear," he said with a brisk kindliness that cut her far more just then than severity would have done, "you're all wound up in self-analysis and psychologic self-consciousness, and you're spinning round and round in your own entity like a kitten chasing her tail. It's a perfectly recognizable phase of a sort of minor hysteria that often gets hold of women, and curiously enough, it usually comes about five or six years after marriage. We doctors meet it over and over again. 'But, Doctor, I'm so nervous and excited all the time, and I don't sleep! I worry so--and much as I love my husband, I just can't help worrying!'"

Looking up and toward his wife as she sat opposite him in the lamp-light, Warren Gregory found no smile on the beautiful face. Rachael's hurt was deeper than her pride; she looked stricken.

"Don't put yourself in their class, my dear!" her husband said leniently. "You need some country air. You'll get down to Clark's Hills in a week or two and blow some of these notions away. Meanwhile, why don't you run down to the club every morning, and play a good smashing game of squash, and take a plunge. Put yourself through a little training!" He reopened his book.

Rachael did not answer. Presently glancing at her he saw that she was reading, too. _

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